


King and Princess Talk

by somethingofatrainwreck



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Sexual Content, old school Bellarke
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-02-28 17:23:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 42,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2740751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingofatrainwreck/pseuds/somethingofatrainwreck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>20 times the right question forces Clarke and Bellamy to say everything they need to say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 5

(5) Why haven’t we had sex? (aka the one where their working environment definitely isn’t sexual tension free.) 

 

“Alright so Kye and Harris are still sick, Everett’s arm isn’t fully healed, and Tess is still in quarantine from that rash.”

“Is that it?”

“That’s it.”

“Four excused, that means I’m going to have to put two more people on lumber…”

“Whoa, whoa Bellamy what are you doing?”

He freezes and stares down at the woodchips on the table in front of him. Each one had a number carved into it which corresponded to a name on Clarke’s master list. They had created the system to preserve paper. So far it was working pretty well. Bellamy didn’t much like the idea of reducing someone’s identity to a number, but as a temporary system until they finished reestablishing their camp it was the best they could do.

“What do you mean what am I doing?” he asks “I’m doing the same thing I do every…”

“You can’t put Alexander and Laurel on lumber together.” She reaches over him and grabs their woodchips. “They just broke up last night. All they’ll do is argue and nothing will get done.”

He’s stunned for a moment because since when has Clarke paid attention to camp gossip?

She leans forward and looks at the other groups he had arranged. “Ethan and Paul shouldn’t be in the same hunting party either, they’re both sleeping with Olivia they’ll probably shoot each other. I’ll just put Paul on lumber…”

He grabs her arm, “Paul is a good shot.”

“Okay, than Ethan…”

“No, I put them both in the hunting party for a reason Clarke.”

“Well it’s not going to work.”

“Why because their fucking the same girl? Who cares?” He tries to snatch the woodchips out of her hand but she rips them away. He’s starting to get annoyed now, and that’s really unfortunate because it’s been a record two weeks since they’ve had a serious argument. 

“And this is why things haven’t been getting done around here.”

Oh yeah he’s definitely pissed.

“Why because I’m not factoring in childish bullshit?”

“No because you’re so focused on what has to be done that you’re not paying attention. They’re people Bellamy, barely adults, and if we want this society to function we have to make sure we know what’s going on with them.”

“You seriously want me to take their sex lives into consideration?”

“For the benefit of productivity, yes. Here- let me show you…” she pulls out her pencil and the master list that she keeps in her pocket. Bellamy watches as she starts drawing lines, furrowing her brow in that way she usually does when diagnosing wounds, the particularly nasty kind that make Bellamy (and any normal person) want to throw up. “Okay,” she finally says “I drew a line between everyone that, to my knowledge, has had some kind of sexual contact or romantic relationship. We should try to separate them as much as possible.”

And then she hands him a piece of paper that is basically filled with 78 names and what must be 230 lines.

“What the fuck has been going on around here?!” he stares down at the list in shock because when and where and how in the holy hell did all this go on? “This is ridiculous Clarke, I can’t sit here for hours and try to navigate this bullshit. They need to learn to deal with each other like adults.”

“It seems like there’s a lot of dealing with each other like adults going on. That’s kind of the problem.”

She’s almost smiling at him now and he definitely doesn’t appreciate her smart mouth, even if he does stare at it for a few seconds too long. 

“What, you want to do have a camp-wide sex talk? That’ll go over well.”

He shakes his head and tosses the list back at her. He’ll redo the groups, but not right away. It’s part of this partnership they’ve developed. He’ll compromise with her on basically everything but he’ll do so on his own terms. Usually that means waiting until she walks away from him so he doesn’t have to see the look of triumph on her face.  
She just sighs and looks back down at the list “I just think you need to pay attention more. These are our people, what goes on in their lives might seem petty but it still matters.”  
He rolls his eyes and looks back down at the stupid woodchips. She’s obviously not going to let this go so he should just make a few changes to pacify her and then spend the next few days causally reminding everyone he sees to keep it in their fucking pants.

“Jesus….this is stupid… Clarke did Anthony fuck Charlene or Jade?” he feels like he’s putting together a fucking puzzle and it’s ridiculous and unnecessary. “Clarke?” When he looks back to see why she hasn’t answered him, she’s examining the list again. “Princess?!” he slams his hands down on the table and she jumps,“trying to develop a sexual tension free working environment here. Some help would be nice.”

“Sorry,” she says as she shakes her head “Sorry I was just thinking…”

“Uh huh, so Anthony, was it Charlene or Jade or both?”

“Why haven’t we had sex?”

It’s the weirdest thing because he knows what she just said, he understands english, but he can’t process it. He looks around the tent, absolutely sure that the words had come from someone else, but it’s just the two of them: Clarke and Bellamy who definitely have not had sex. She’s looking at him like he’s done her some great injustice, like there’s an actual reason they haven’t other than the fact that Bellamy has really, really, really good self-control. What the fuck is he supposed to say to that that doesn’t make him sound like an asshole or a pathetic thirteen year old pining after his first crush?

“Who has time for sex?” He says lightly, as if humor would actually be able to diffuse the impenetrable fog that is this tension “besides everyone in this camp apparently.”

“You did.” She says as she holds up the list and he sees six or seven lines from his name. He wonders how the hell she knew about all of them, he’d only ever told her about Raven. Then again he wasn’t exactly discrete in his younger days as Bellamy, King of whatever the hell we want. 

“I did," he concedes, "I did then because I was trying to distract myself from how fucked I was.”

His eyes raise a few centimeters above his own name and sees Clarke’s with one solitary line leading to Finn. It’s the most irritating line he’s ever seen.

“Just never with me.”

“Nope. So, Anthony…”

“You don’t think that’s weird?”

“I think this is weird, I think talking about this is really fucking weird.” It’s painful really.

She sighs and puts the list down. He’s actually stupid enough to look over at her and he hates himself for it because she looks like he’s just rejected her.  
“Princess what is this really about?” he asks as he runs his hands over his face.

“I don’t know.” She says “I have less lines than anyone else- because I spend most of my time with you and I'm just....curious.”

He’s quiet for a second, letting his words run through his internal filter two or three extra times before he actually speaks. “You don’t have as many lines because people here respect you. I respect you.”

“So you won’t have sex with me because you respect me?”

“Why do I feel like you’re gonna be pissed no matter how I answer that?”

“I’m just…” she sighs “Nevermind, it’s dumb okay. It’s stupid, forget it. Anthony slept with both of them, but he and Charlene are still friends.”

She looks upset and its impossible for him to focus when she looks upset, so he turns all the way in his chair so that he’s facing her “Really Clarke?”

“What?”

“I can’t work on this when you’re over there moping.”

“I’m not moping.”

“So you want to do it? Is that it? Cause we can do it right now.”

“Stop it Bellamy.”

“I don’t get it, you’re mad because we haven’t done it , but you don’t want to do it…”

“It's just…” she lets out an impatient sigh and he can tell that she’s starting to blush “weird that there's no attraction.”

He must look at her like she’s an idiot because she covers her face with her hands and shakes her head “I told you it was stupid. Just forget it.”

He turns back around, because he knows what she needs to hear and he sure as hell isn’t going to look at her when he says it. “Yeah okay Clarke, I'm not attracted to the only woman on this earth that performed advanced surgery without training, subdued a mob, battled grounders, survived being captured and tortured, told the Ark to go fuck themselves, and still manages to find time to keep these kids alive.” 

She doesn’t say anything.

“That was sarcasm," he says, bitterly accepting what he has to tell her because of their stupid pledge of honesty, "of course I’m interested in you…..like that, but we have jobs to do here. We’re too important to…it’s just not what this is.”

“I know that,” and he’s sure her voice is just a little bit lighter. “I just wanted to hear you say it.”

He almost laughs, especially when he turns back around and sees her smile. "Seems like you're the one that’s not interested Griffin.”

She stands up, folds the master list, and places it back in her pocket “Do you remember when you had that bee sting and I told you, you had to keep your shirt off for the next few days to prevent infection?”

“Yeah.”

“I absolutely made that up, take from that whatever you will." She shoots him a wink and leaves the tent. 

Sometimes he forgets that they're living after the end of the world. Calrke Griffin is…..seriously not what Bellamy ever expected.


	2. 13

(13) Why can’t you just leave me alone? (aka the one with all the yelling…and kissing.)

 

13) Why can’t you just leave me alone? (aka the one with all the yelling…and kissing.)

They’ve been doing so well.

It’s been months since Clarke and Bellamy have had an argument like this… a year maybe. An argument where she almost feels like it would be a relief to never see his surly fucking face ever again. She knows that the best thing to do in these situations is walk away and let him calm down, but this time she has no intentions of making it easy on him. He can’t make decisions like he’s in this alone. So she follows him back to his tent with her arms crossed.

“You’re being selfish Bellamy,” she says- continuing the discussion he’d tried to put a stop to back at the fire, “You have a personal vendetta and you’re willing to risk all of us…”

He bats his hand like she’s just a slightly irritating fly, but she can see his jaw twitching. He’s just as pissed as she is. “Shut up and go to bed Clarke. It’s over.”

“No,” she says as she rushes to catch up with him, “It’s not over actually! We need to talk about this.”

“I don’t _need_ to do anything!” he turns and glares at her. “Now get out of my face before you wake up the whole camp!”

He storms into his tent- _his_ filled with her stuff. _His_ tent that she’s been sleeping in more than she’s been sleeping in her own. And sure it’s platonic, and they’ve both put a lot of effort into it remaining platonic, but they’ve crossed over into a different territory of intimacy that makes him brushing her off like this total and complete bullshit.

“I did not invite you in here,” he says like an invitation has ever been required before, “get the fuck out.”

She stands her ground “Don’t get us involved in this.”

“Clarke get the fuck out now.” She isn’t afraid of him- not like this- not ever.

“We’ve already sent our people to fight their battles,” she says, “We’ve done what we agreed to do. I’m all for an alliance Bellamy but at what cost? We lost two men…”

“You think I don’t remember how many men we lost?!” he demands, “I was there!”

“So you want to go back?!”

“I want to do what’s best for our people.”

“Marching to their death is what’s best for them?! They aren’t soldiers Bellamy!”

He shakes his head. They’re literally repeating the same arguments over and over again. “Clarke get out of my tent.”

“No.”

“Get out of my tent.”

“No.”

“GET OUT OF MY FUCKING TENT!”

“NO! AND YELLING AT ME ISNT GOING TO DO A DAMN THING BUT WAKE THE ENTIRE FUCKING CAMP UP-“

He stands up and puts his hand over her mouth. She shoves him away and resists the urge to bite him. “Don’t put your hands on me," she says. He almost looks guilty for a second and then the anger is back and he’s re-lacing his boots.

“Fine, you won’t go, I will.”

“If you would just wait- I could explain to them that we don’t have the manpower to..”

“No one has the manpower for this!” he says- weary and frustrated from stories of rogue warriors, “This isn’t about winning a war. It’s about making it clear that they can’t fuck with us. We need them to fear us!”

She’s heard him say that hundreds of times-pretending like he actually gets joy from shooting that fucking gun. Really, all it is is that he can't stand to be helpless. He calls her a control freak, but it’s him really- because he’s proven time and time again that he’s willing to do anything just to protect the tiniest shred of control they have in thier unpredictable world.

“It’s too risky Bellamy,” she says- and not just for him but for everyone that will follow him.

“Clarke, I know you're convinced that you're natural born fucking leader," he says sarcastically, "but don’t start pretending that you’re a military strategist.”

“We didn’t come down here to go to war,” she argues.

“No, we came down here to die.”

She wants to correct him- _we_ came here to die- _you_ came here to escape, but that seems petty and it’ll probably piss him off so much that he’ll become incoherent.

“We should at least put it to a vote,” she suggests, “they should decide.”

He turns and glares at her. “If anyone in this camp wants to go, then no one is going to stop them. You can vote all you want, but when the time comes there are going to be people that want to do all they can to defend this community.”

He’s not pointing dramatically off into the distance the way he usually does when he’s referencing their people. Between that- and his almost irrational anger- it becomes pretty clear what’s actually going on. He’s back to his immature, selfish ways. This is all about him.

He storms out of the tent and she follows again, this time not letting him get too far ahead of her.

“So you’re going then?” she says, “That’s what this is about? You just want to make sure that you’ll have the opportunity to…”

He stops and turns to face her, “To protect my sister and the people that I care about? Yeah Clarke, I'm going. One of us has to and I'm sure as fuck not going to be the one that stays here.”

It’s selfish- it’s so fucking selfish that she can’t even believe it’s coming out of his mouth. 

“Bellamy, you barely came back last time!” she yells,” I had to dig a damn bullet out of your side!” _Dig_ isn’t a dramatization either. He was out of action for weeks. He has a massive scar to remind her. 

“What about Octavia?” she says- while he continues to ignore her and walk towards her tent like he could just deposit her there. “Have you told her yet? I’m sure she’ll be thrilled. She told you to stay out of this, she told all of us to stay out of it!”

“Don’t talk about my sister Clarke.”

“She’s going to be furious and you know it, because this is fucking stupid! You’re going to get yourself killed because you can’t just move on and ….”

He stops in front of her tent, holds out his arm and glares at her “Home sweet home your majesty”. 

“What the fuck is going on with you?” she demands, “This isn’t just about _you_ asshole. You’re going to go off to war because _fuck your sister’s warning_ , she can't possibly know what she's talking about, and Miller will follow you because he follows you everywhere, maybe even Sterling and Monroe and that’s just okay with you because you want to avenge two deaths that wouldn’t have even happened if you hadn’t agreed to meddling in this war in the first place!”

He’s still walking away- but there’s nowhere else to go- not unless he wants to take this out to the dark foreboding forest with his precious rifle resting back in his tent.

“You can’t do this Bellamy, you can’t let survivor’s guilt make this decision!”

“STOP FOLLOWING ME!” he yells. “Why can’t you just leave me the fuck alone?!”

He looks desperate when he turns to face her, and it’s that look that deflates her anger. He’s not going to change his mind. If anyone had a chance at doing that it would be Octavia, not her. He was going to do whatever he wanted to do even though they’ve worked on and perfected their partnership for the last five years. When it came down to it Bellamy Blake still thought he was a King and Clarke was just the Princess that was good at applying bandages.

“You know what?” she says- taking a few steps back towards her tent, “Fine. Fine. Go to war, lead more people to their deaths and leave people here mourning and alone. Devastate your sister, get yourself killed, do whatever it is King Bellamy wants to do. Obviously a weak little girl like me can’t understand war- because it’s not like I have any experience. I’ll leave you alone, but don’t you fucking dare come to me the morning you leave with a goodbye and some bullshit about always coming back because that doesn’t matter if you’re just going to leave again.”

She turns and walks calmly into her tent. Grabs an old match and strikes it five or six times before it finally sparks enough to light the crude, beeswax candle she'd left behind. She’s laid a trap for him- because he always responds to guilt pretty predictably. Sure enough by the time she turns around and starts searching for her jacket- which is probably in his tent- he’s standing right in front of her.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about," he says.

She shakes her head at him. “Yeah, you mentioned that.”

“Clarke,” he says- his hands fidgeting around as he tries to smother his anger. “I need to do this.”

That’s bullshit. He _wants_ to do this so he can feel like he’s doing something. He doesn’t give a shit about what that means for everyone else.

“Get out,” she says- trying to dismiss him as easily as he dismissed her.

“Why don’t you tell me why you’re really mad?” he asks. Smirking at her like some kind of evil supervillain.

“I just did!” she yells back- because she doesn’t like what he’s insinuating. 

“I’d devastate my sister or I’d devastate _you_?” he asks.

She snorts. Of course he would bring that up now. Because obviously there’s nothing left between them that he doesn’t mind shitting on just so he can march off and shoot something with a clear conscience. “Just leave Bellamy,” she says.

“I have to do this for our people, for our alliance,” he says, “This is the part of the reason they leave us alone. There’s nothing on the Mountain. It won’t be like last time.”

“Oh, last time,” she says, “last time when you were gone two weeks longer than you promised and came back with two dead bodies and a nearly fatal bullet wound? Do you fucking hear yourself? I’m supposed to be okay with this?”

“Clarke,” he takes a step closer and she knows exactly what’s he’s doing- being selfish again.

“Don’t,” she warns.

“I need you to understand.”

“I do,” she says “I do understand. You’ve made it perfectly clear what’s important to you Blake, so just leave. You wanted me to leave you alone, fine.”

She walks over to the table pretends to look at its ragged wooden surface. Bellamy follows her. He stands right behind her. His breath is on the back of her neck. She’s so annoyed her hands are shaking. She’s about five seconds from leaving her tent and hiding in Raven's for the rest of the night. She knows what this is, because it’s long overdue and he has always had shit timing. Stupid, selfish bastard. 

“Princess, look at me.”

Stupid, selfish, insufferable bastard calling her Princess like it’s a fucking term of endearment and not a horrible memory. “No.”

His hand gently wraps around her wrist and she decides not to fight him. She turns around and stares at his throat. His eyes are where it’s at- all this emotion. If she just avoids them- if she can just hold onto the anger- she can get out of this without crossing a line that can’t be uncrossed. 

“Bellamy I can’t keep doing this with you,” she mumbles, “It's exhausting.”

He ignores her again, like he’s been doing all night, and sinks down a bit to meet her eyes. “I’m always going to come back.”

She shakes her head. “You can’t make that promise. You’re not God.”

“You trust me?” he asks.

“Not this time,” she forces herself to say.

“That’s bullshit Clarke.”

“Don’t ask me to be okay with this.”

“Fine. Don’t ask me to stay.”

It’s not the same thing, and if he doesn’t know that than he’s more of an idiot than she’s ever given him credit for. She closes her eyes and tries not to imagine how bad it felt the last time, watching the gate for them to come walking in every day. Stuck doing the waiting and the cleanup while he was off being a fucking hero. Back then things were so different. It would be worse now and she knew it. He knew it too. (Probably one of many reasons that he was so adamant about avoiding this conversation). She doesn’t know how to handle this, so she just settles for honesty.

“I am so fucking furious with you I can’t even look at your face,” she says, "If they insist on one of us going, it should be me-"

“That's not happening," he says. She knew he would, practically mouthed the words along with him. "You're their medic. They need you here. _I’m_ going Clarke. I’m going because it’s what I promised them years ago and it’s the right thing to do, but I. Will. Be. Back.”

He punctuates each word by moving closer to her- his arms planted on the table behind her. 

“I told you I didn’t want to hear this-“

He talks right over her. “And when I come back you and I are gonna have a conversation about this.”

She lets out a nervous scoff, “About what? Your obsession with playing the hero?”

“You know what," he moves closer and she turns her head.

“Don’t do this right now,” she says in a panic. Because whatever they’ve been building up to cannot possibly be this, this horrible gaping feeling in her gut that she can’t help but fill with resentment towards him. She’d just started thinking that maybe something more with him would be worth it, and that was a really hard place to get to. “Don’t ruin it by doing it when I want to punch you in the face.”

“Clarke,” he breathes out- it almost sounds like a laugh. A _who are you kidding- neither of us is walking away from this_ kind of laugh. 

“You don’t get to do this and then just leave,” she says, “that’s not fair.”

“Yeah. I know.”

When she finally looks at him- his eyes baring right into hers, every little bit of anger falls away like crumbling rock. She just wants. She wants him to stay exactly where he is. She wants it to always feel like this. She wants to go back and convince herself to want this much sooner than now. She wants this to be the “it” everybody always talks about finding- and she wants to hold onto feeling like that isn’t terrifying. 

“Clarke?” his forehead is touching hers as his eyes close. He’s giving her the power- giving her the control. Waiting.

She moves forward a few inches and her lips tentatively touch his for the first time. 

There aren’t fireworks- or any kind of crazy buzzing, other than the usual biological reaction of physical proximity to someone you’re sexually attracted to. That’s never been the part she was worried about. This feels like walking into somewhere familiar. Finally seeing their big gate after one of her voyages. Relief. Home. Safety. Bellamy.

She does it again- barely moving her lips until he shakes whatever it is he’s struggling through and pushes back against her. His fingers digging into her side like he’s gripping a life line. The hand on her check has moved back to the hair behind her ear, guiding her a bit as his face tilts to the side and it all changes again.

He’s in every breath- warm and everywhere. It’s not just hot- it is of course , especially as her legs hit the back of the table and he just keeps moving forward like every inch of space between them is physically painful, it’s soul-shaking, those last few steps through smoke until it clears and you can see home.

The table creaks loudly. That’s what calls them away from each other- with Bellamy’s lips on her neck and half of his body following her onto the table.

He pulls away and tries to hide the fact that he’s struggling to catch his breath. “Ask me to stay,” he says.

“What?” she’s fixing her shirt and letting her eyes adjust to the low candle light of the tent.

“Ask me to stay,” his forehead is against hers again, “tell me you don’t want me to go.”

Being trapped is Bellamy’s biggest fear. She’s always known that. Asking him to stay- to turn his back on this fight would be like trapping him here. It is selfish that he won’t let her be the one to go. It’s selfish because he knows how bad it feels to wonder, but someone will have to go. She knew that- even if she was stubbornly trying to tell herself it wasn’t true. He can’t stay- not because of her- not because of this.

The last thing she wanted to do was change anything about who he is.

“No,” she finally says, “that’s not my decision to make. If you want to go, you should go. I’ll deal with everything here until you get back.”

He leans his head back to meet her eyes. "I'd rather be here," he says, "you know that right? That I-”

He’s struggling to find words that will only make this harder, so she holds her hand up to silence him. “Don’t…don’t do that yet.”

He smiles and it’s the most attractive fucking thing she’s ever seen in her life. 

"And don't even try to kiss me again," she says, trying to scoot back and regain some self-control. She was angry. This was about being angry. "Seriously, I'm- _so_ done with you right now."

" _You_ kissed _me_."

Her eyes get wide. "You initiated this whole thing-"

He pulls her forward quickly- so quickly she has to grab his shoulders to steady herself. “Are you staying here tonight?” he asks.

She looks around at the tent- missing half of her shit. It’s cold, and dark, and her bed looks flat and awkward. None of that really matters though, because she can feel the heat of his hands through her shirt. 

“What do you think?” she says- with an eye roll.

“I think tomorrow is going to be a late morning,” he says- his lips threatening to kiss her again.

“Can’t be,” she says, “it’s going to rain. We need to-“

“ _They_ need to,” he says. He kisses her once, “they know what they’re doing.”

“I’m still fucking pissed-“

“Good,” he mumbles. 

When he guides her off of the table and onto the ground, she actually stumbles. 

She follows his smug face all the way back to his tent- and then everything changes again.

The next day starts with an extremely late morning.


	3. 10

AN: Remember that these are not in chronological order! Thanks for reading!!

 

(10) Who the hell do you think you are? (aka the one with Crazy Ted.)

 

She storms into his tent in a fury, kicking his discarded boots out of her way. Creating chaos in his every waking breath is just sort of what she does- he's accepted that even on days when he hasn't given her something to be pissed about.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” she demands.

He knows why she’s here, he’d been expecting her for hours, but the sight of her there, red-faced with clenched fists, glaring at him like she could make him burst into flames using only her eyes was enough to make him crack a smirk.

She watches him- that way she always does. A woman constantly trying to defeat him in a chess match he never asked to be a part of. So he lets his smirk grow, just to see her eyes narrow as she steps forward “I just met with Ted," she sneers, "He apologized to me for not acknowledging my marital status.”

It's an accusation, but Bellamy isn't really in the mood to read inbetween the lines. If she wants to have this out, she's going to have to talk to him like an adult. 

“That was considerate of him," he says. 

Her eyebrows arch in outrage. “Stop fucking smirking.”

“Calm down Clarke.”

“Calm down? You want me to calm down!”

He let's out a weary sigh, a Knight constantly tasked with slaying her dramatics. "Yes.”

But she doesn't relent. Her shoulders are strong and even, her fingers are clenched. “This is unforgivable," she says, "do you realize that?"

It's harsh and condescending and he gives in to his knee-jerk reaction to mock her further. “Is it dramatic in here or is it just me?”

“You told him we were married!” she says- emphasizing each word.

“I didn’t tell him anything," he says, "they told him we were married, I just didn’t deny it.”

Her eyes are so wide he wonders if it’s painful. “Why would they do that?! Why? In what world does that make any sense?”

"In _this_ world- where a marauding lunatic starts casually hinting that he's interested in a marriage to unite our clans." She's still staring at him like he'd murdered everyone she'd ever cared about so he continues to explain, "apparently he was asking Raven about available women. Your name came up, and someone decided to lie. I don't know who it started with." 

“But why would they say that we were...”

“Because they know that Ted and his people are fucking weirdos and you don’t belong with them- and more to the point they know how much you enjoying falling on the flames like a martyr. If he had asked-”

“I would have said no!”

“You would have considered it," he argued, "and if he persisted- who the hell knows what you would have done.”

“So lying to him was the way to go? Damnit Bellamy we need peace with these people!”

At this point he was pretty much done with her tantrum- and that's what it was, it was the fit of a control freak who had the wheel jerked from her hands for just a second. She likes to pretend these issues are about morality - being honest, being genuine- all she really cares about is the fact that he made a decision without her. Spinning it so that it looks like he made a diplomatic blunder is beneath her really, but her face is red and her eyes are blazing and if he doesn't take this back into the realm of rationality it could disrupt everything.

“They’re a nomadic clan of polygamists that wear jewelry made of human teeth we don’t need to have anything to do with them," he reminds her, "they haven't declared war on us yet- what makes you think this is going to change anything?”

“Because it’s a lie!”

she repeats.

“Clarke," he says with a shake of his head- an almost sympathetic shake of his head, "It’s not that much of a lie.”

She looks around his empty tent- almost as if she expects someone to pop up and start laughing at him. “WHAT?!” she demands, "It's a massive lie. It couldn't be further from the truth!"

“Obviously I'm not trying to imply that you're in love with me," he says, "but from a political standpoint-”

“Marriage is not something that should be considered from a political standpoint.”

He shakes his head. “Thousands of years ago most marriages were-”

“I’m not a princess Bellamy," she snaps, "you’re not my father, or my husband, or my king. You had no right to lie to that man.”

He turns his back on her- goes back to crudely drawn map of the river he'd been staring at for hours. “Did it ever occur to you that turning down Ted’s proposal would disrupt the peace more than this little white lie?”

“IT’S NOT A LITTLE WHITE LIE.”

She's back to yelling- so loud that someone is probably going to overhear.

“We see them once or twice a year," he tries to explain calmly, "when they come around, we just keep our mouths shut and do everything the way we usually do it.”

“And what about here in Camp" she asks, "how are they gonna react to this?”

“They know it’s a lie,” he says- standing up to gather his boots from where she’d kicked them. It's time to leave. If she can't be diffused, the best course of action is escape, “they joke about us being married constantly”

“They do not!”  
She’s playing dumb. They aren’t exactly subtle about it.  
“They call us Mom and Dad,” he reminds her.

“And other clans," she says- ignoring _Mom and Dad_ the same way she does when the kids say it. "What if word gets to other clans!?”

“What other clans will listen to anything Crazy Ted has to say?” he asks skeptically.

She's desperately clinging to this argument- stepping in front of him so he can't squeeze past through the entrance of the tent. “What if there’s someone else out there- some other alliance to form with a clan that we haven’t met yet that hears from Crazy-" she shakes her head, "from Ted that you and I are married?!”

"Would that be so fucking horrible?" he wants to ask- it's not the right time, place, or context- not even for him to think about it- so instead he takes step back and tries not to roll his eyes. “You want to marry a grounder?” 

“You seriously don’t think you did anything wrong do you?” she demands.

“I'm not going to apologize for this unless you can look me in the eye and tell me that you really want to marry Ted,” he says, when she doesn't reply he keeps going, “and as for this hypothetical grounder marriage of yours, I think that would be a mistake. You know how I feel. We need to create a culture of our own. Once we're established we have no choice but to focus on re-population. They need to create relationships amongst themselves. ”

“We aren't talking about them. We're talking about me. I can't be a part of that happily ever after nonsense. They all look at me like I'm some kind of authority figure- who the hell would even try to marry me out there?! ”

He sighs again. He wants to say it, wants to point out that there is another person in the same shoes she's in within the walls of this camp- just to be a dick mostly- but he feels like at this point she might actually try to claw his eyes out.

“I just…I can’t believe you did this," she says, "I can’t believe you didn’t say anything to me, you just pretended to be my husband.”

“I didn't have to pretend-”

“Stop saying things like that!”

He lets out a humorless laugh. “It’s true!”

“No it’s not!”

“Clarke we are domestic as fuck and don’t try to tell me differently," he sounds pretty bitter about it, but that's not something she'd bother to comment on right now seeing as she's denying it within an inch of her life. And because she's still staring at him like she has no fucking idea what he's talking about - which is bullshit- he keeps going, right across the line without even looking back. "I know how you feel about me, you know how I feel about you. This is the way it is.”

He tries to walk around her again while she angrily stutters, “How I feel about….what are you talking about? You and I have never…ever discussed…feelings….or domesticity.”

She’s insulting both of their intelligence now, there are so many things unspoken between them that most of them have just sort of become a given.

“This is not okay Bellamy. I trusted you.”  
He stops. The Magic word. Trust. His knees lock up and he curses under his breath as he turns around.

“Seriously Clarke?" he says with forced calmness, "One illiterate lunatic thinks we’re married- why the fuck are you acting like I just stabbed you in the back?”

“Because I don’t like surprises,” she says, “I don’t like hearing that the one person I trust most on this earth is telling lies about me!”

One look at the betrayal in her eyes and the whole thing doesn’t seem as funny anymore. Or as annoying. If she actually feels that way- if she's really only upset about that part of it....well it makes sense. If situations were reversed, maybe he'd feel the same.

“Obviously I wasn’t trying to betray your trust,” he admits, “it was an uncomfortable situation, for me, for you, for them. These things always are. I thought it would be easier this way.”

She takes a few steps closer to him, “You don’t think that everyone deciding we were married behind my back is putting me in an uncomfortable situation?”

Something about that- about the idea of her finding marriage with him uncomfortable- really rubs him the wrong way. She's not intending to offend him, not the way she has, but it doesn't stop him from snapping at her. “Okay, Clarke, you’ve made your point,” he says, “I was wrong. Next time I’ll be sure to send the grounder straight to you so you can get your happily ever after outside of camp.” He hears the anger in his voice and it surprises him almost as much as it surprises Clarke.

“So somehow I’ve become the bad guy in all of this?” she asks in disbelief, “You’re mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you," he says, "I'm not a fucking child alright? I realize that you'd have no problem sacrificing your life for an alliance. But what the fuck happens to this camp if you do?”

Maybe that's always been what this was about. Maybe he was more than a little worried about what she'd say if Ted actually got the chance to ask- and not just what would happen to the Camp...what would happen to him.

“What are you talking about?” Clarke asks.

“If you do that- marry some Grounder, you'll leave. You can’t be in two places at once. You can’t be here with me running this camp and somewhere else as someone's creepy ceremonial wife. God Clarke- what if they expected you to have kids?!”

These are insecurities he wasn’t even sure that he had- it’s kind of inconvenient that they’re deciding to come out now.  
“Bellamy…”

“And I'm telling you right now no one would ever be okay with their wife having a relationship with someone the way you and I do. We’re too close.”

“If I ever marry,” she says it like that’s a joke in and of itself, “it wouldn’t change anything.”

He shakes his head. “Don’t be naive.”

“What about you?” she asks, “When the day finally comes and you stop acting like such a selfish asshole and fall in love? What happens then? What happens to me?”

“No Grounder would ever propose to me- haven't met one yet that fucking stupid."

"One of our girls then, here in camp."

"I'm not going anywhere. Nothing about this is ever going to change on my end. I have no intentions of marrying anyone- never have.” 

"You've had plenty of flings-"

"Purely carnal."

He’s wearing that smile that usually indicates that he’s joking- forcing it on his face and praying she lets the conversation drift back into safe territory. She raises her eyebrows and smiles back, looking around at the space she’d just paced around and yelled in.

“This doesn’t mean I forgive you," she says, "but I will admit that I may…have overreacted a little bit.”

“I should have told you,” he concedes, “It won’t happen again.”

“Just in case it’s unclear,” she says as she starts to walk out of the tent, “I would never marry Ted.”

He nods- and looks at her about as intensely as he ever has.

“Good.”


	4. 7

_(7) What’s with the tears? (aka the one where Bellamy leaves the first time)_

 

She had actually, seriously considered hiding from him that day.

Everyone was gathered at the gates, bunched together, saying goodbyes, crying and laughing, holding desperately to the little families they had created.

Clarke has been sitting in the med tent since dawn. First, she decides to repack the medical kit that she had organized for them the night before. Then she realizes the seaweed would keep better if she wrapped the individual strands in cloth rather than bunching them together. After that a boy comes in with a small burn, and Clarke spends forty minutes explaining to him the different classifications of burns, how to identify them, and how to treat them before covering his wound in a soothing balm and sending him on his way. She has repacked the kit twice more before eating a small lunch and then repacking it one more time just to see if she could fit in another roll of bandages. And then, just as she is planning to sneak out to the meadow just beyond their new camp walls, Raven shows up. Her arms are crossed and her eyebrows are raised. She would probably have her hip popped out in that “don’t give me any of your shit Clarke” pose of hers, but she was still struggling to get used to keeping her balance with that new brace on her leg.

“Oh Clarke, good you’re finished with the med kit!” she says as she reaches over to snatch it out of Clarke’s grasp.

“Well, I did want to try to add another…”

Raven shakes her head “No, they’re about to leave. Let’s go.”

“I don’t need you to talk to me like I’m a child.”

“Clarke, I’m trying to help you. If you don’t go out there you’ll never forgive yourself.”

It feels like every organ in Clarke’s body drops because she’s right….she’s really right and it was so stupid to think that she wouldn’t have to face this, like Bellamy wouldn’t have come and found her if she’d stayed another ten minutes anyway. But even though she knows she has to face this, and she’s faced horrible things before, she still needs Raven to take a threatening step towards her (it was more like a stumble but Jesus the girl had a bullet pulled out of her, it may have been two years ago but Clarke knows it’s a miracle that she’s even able to walk at all) to get her to stand and start walking out of the med tent and towards the main gate.

Raven leaves her side when she spots Miller, but she touches Clarke on the shoulder before she goes. Clarke reminds herself to check on her friend later, mostly because she knows Raven is furious with herself for not being able to go along. She is a fighter. She certainly doesn’t belong here waiting.

As she walks she shakes as many of their hands as possible. She wishes them luck, pats them on the back, shoots sympathetic looks to friends and significant others who are struggling to keep the worry out of their eyes. 22 men and women of the remaining 100 were leaving them, Clarke prayed to every divine power she had ever heard about that all 22 would return. Bellamy had promised her they would, but Bellamy was just a man….though he forgets that sometimes.

She finds Bellamy with her eyes just as he is pulling Octavia to the side. Lincoln approaches her slowly, obviously trying to give the siblings some space. He’s still not overly fond of Clarke but they’ve created a level of mutual respect. He looks less intimidating today, but she knows that’s probably because the thought of leaving Octavia makes him want to crawl into a little ball and cry like a baby….and that’s a mental picture Clarke never thought she’d have.

“Thank you for the medical supplies,” he says, and Clarke rips her eyes away from the Blakes to nod at him.

“It was the least I could do.”

“We’ll have good healers where we’re going,” Lincoln adds “but everything counts.”

“It’s best to be overly prepared.” Clarke agrees.

Lincoln just nods and looks back over to see if Octavia has finished. She’s got her arms wrapped around Bellamy in a way that looks almost painful. She keeps shaking her head. Bellamy is trying to make her understand. They’d talked- they’d agreed. She needed to stay back and help keep camp safe. Bellamy was really counting on her, knowing she was there would help him sleep at night. Clarke has already heard that speech.

“I’ll watch out for her.” She says suddenly to Lincoln “I know she doesn’t need it, but I will. I just…thought you’d like to know that she has friends here.”

He almost smiles and she can appreciate that.

“Your people are strong,” he says “Stronger than I ever expected.”

She assumes he’s trying to reassure her, so she gives him the same half smile that he gave her and turns just in time to see Bellamy and Octavia break apart. Her face is already stained with tears- angry and sad. Clarke tries not to look at her, or at Bellamy. She can feel the familiar prickling behind her eyes. She takes a deep breath and tries to think like a leader, a diplomat, a woman who is here to see her people off and wish her partner the best of luck. But this …this isn’t that easy. She’s never had to lead by herself. Her people are still young, so, so young, certainly not prepared for a war and Bellamy….is her partner but she’s not naive enough to think that giving him a composed and diplomatic goodbye is anywhere in the realm of possibility.

Lincoln walks away from her to comfort Octavia and Clarke gets approximately six seconds of silence before Bellamy is in front of her. That brave face of his is slipping, obviously exhausted from the conversation with his little sister. He looks the same way that she feels: like it would probably be easier just to skip the goodbyes but how could she live with herself if she did?

“I packed the med kit,” she says and she turns her head because for some reason that sentence is the one that makes her start to cry. “Lincoln has it. It’s not much, but it should be enough for your trip. There will be other healers where you’re going so…”

“Where have you been all day?”

God, his voice.

She still won’t look at him, but she can feel that a tear has escaped. It’s running down her cheek and she knows he notices it before she can distract him with an answer. “I was packing the med kit…and then Kelvin came in with a burn so ….I had to help him. I was busy.”

“Clarke,”

She turns to him on instinct, because he’s using the voice that he uses when they have their nightly discussions about the hundreds of things that could kill them on a daily basis. The things she’ll have to deal with on her own now. So yes, she lets herself look at him and some horrible, dramatic part of her wonders if that will be the last time she ever hears him say her name. The thought makes her sick. Bellamy won’t break that promise. He’ll come back. Unfortunately her eyes don’t quite seem to believe what her brain is saying because her vision is blurry now, her cheeks hot from trying to hold it in.

“What’s with the tears?” he asks the question with the closest thing he has to a smile, and Clarke tries desperately to return it.

“Don’t be stupid, what tears?” she wipes them away with her hands. “So are you all ready to go?” Her voice cracks, more tears leak out, and he flinches.

“We talked about this.”

“We talked about what?”

“This is fucking- “ he sighs, “come here.” He grabs her wrist and pulls her to him, wrapping his arms around her so that all she can feel is safe, and warm, and Bellamy. She’s glad he did it because no one will be surprised to see them hugging, but she really didn’t want anyone to see her crying like an irrational child…..or a scared little Princess with a broken heart- which she isn’t. She isn’t and will never be.  
“This isn’t a big deal,” he whispers to her “You’ve got Raven and Monroe, you keep doing things the way you’ve been doing them Clarke and everything will be fine.”  
She nods against him, but he must be able to feel her tears through his shirt because he holds her tighter. “I need you to calm down because you need to be strong for them okay? And ….I can’t…I need you to be strong for me too.”

She takes a deep breath and lets his words sink in. He doesn’t often show vulnerability- it would be horrible of her not to acknowledge it.

“You trust me don’t you?” he asks, “You believe me when I say I’m coming back.”

It’s not him she doesn’t trust- it’s this planet- but she nods anyway. “Yeah.”  
“Good.” She thinks she feels him kiss the top of her forehead, but she’s so focused on trying to stop crying that she doesn’t even really care. Eventually she pulls herself away from him, he’s looking at her with the understanding and faith he always has in his eyes, well lately at least. No one could deny that as partners they had a bit of a rocky start, but they’ve grown so much since then. She relies on him now, not just to keep the camp in order, but to keep herself in order. They keep each other balanced. He’s her best friend, her right hand man, her family in a place where she didn’t think she had anybody. He’s a good man and as much as she hates what had to be done, she knows that he’s doing the right thing. So because he’s worked so hard, because he’s come so far, because everyone he’s ever cared about has left him alone in one way or another she wipes the rest of the tears from her eyes and tells him what he deserves to hear.

“I love you Bellamy.”

And it’s not romantic, but it’s not exactly platonic either. She’s not confessing her love for him or even claiming to be _in_ love with him because neither of them have the time or energy for that right now. She’s simply telling him something he probably already knows. They did love each other. How could they not? In a way it was no different than how Bellamy loved Octavia or Monty loved Jasper, but then again it was completely different. Their relationship was entirely their own. They were a pair. They had been by each other’s side since defeating from Mount Weather and hadn’t spent more than a few days apart since that first separation, when she thought he was dead. It’s very complicated, but it’s so simple at the same time and she knows Bellamy gets it because all he does is nod and smile.

“Love you too Clarke.”

It sounds like friendship and family and something permanent. It makes her start to cry all over again.

She hugs him this time and he leans his head down to rest on her shoulder. He’s scared too. He doesn’t have much experience dealing with grounders without having Clarke with him. She can practically feel the weight of the world on his shoulders when he takes a deep breath. “Try to keep Octavia out of trouble,” he finally says.

“No promises.”

He pulls away and looks at her. “If I can find a way to get a message here…to let you know we’re okay. I’ll do it.”

She nods “Eight weeks right?”

“I hope so."

“Be careful what they eat, we don’t know what’s growing out there. The last thing you need is some berry that knocks them unconscious. And make sure Cade O’Leary keeps that ankle wrapped, he’s lucky I’m even letting him go.”

“Right. I already told the hunting parties not to go after boar, but make sure you reiterate that. Especially to my sister. I’m taking most of our good shots and those things are too big for people to be fucking around. And I’d cut the moonshine ration back. A lot of people are going to be hurting and I don’t think you want drunken chaos.”

“No, you’re right. I’ll let Monty know. Did they pack enough food for you?”

“Yeah, just enough for us to carry along. We’ll try to hunt in the morning. Did you figure out who skipped out on their guard shift yester…”  
“Oh yeah, yeah I meant to tell you it was just a misunderstanding.”

“Good, if anyone gives you shit about being on latrine duty, write their fucking names down and I’ll deal with them when I get back. And don’t buy that “it makes me so sick I can’t eat for days” bullshit. They’re always trying to manipulate you…”

“I never fall for it Bellamy.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m just…” he takes a deep breath “Promise me that you’ll sleep at least six hours every day, that you’ll eat , and drink, and ask for help in the med bay if you need it.”

“Don’t patronize me..”

“I’m not. I just don’t want you to worry.”

“Of course I’m going to worry, don’t be an idiot.”

“I need you to take care of yourself just in case..”

“Stop!” she holds her hands up “Don’t bring this up again. We already had this horrible talk and you promised me you’d be back. Please just don’t go there right now.”

“Okay, you’re right.” He holds his hands up, “I’m just….”

“Stalling?”

He smirks because he’s always said that she can read him like a fucking book.

“Yeah.”

“We don’t have to actually say it if you don’t want to.”

“Bellamy?” Lincoln interrupts with a small cough “We should leave soon if we want to make it to the rally point by dark.” Octavia is hanging onto Lincoln’s arm. She’s stopped crying, but she still looks small. So unlike the warrior Octavia has become. She reaches over and grabs Bellamy’s hand. He nods and looks back at Clarke. She can see the word forming on his tongue and she realizes that she doesn’t want to hear it. It sounds cold and final and horrible. So she picks up her arm and looks down at her watch.

“Alright Blake, eight weeks.”

He smiles at her and then closes his eyes and lets go of his sisters hand. Lincoln kisses Octavia’s cheek and steps towards the gates to rally the troops. Bellamy turns around without another glance at them. Clarke can’t blame him, and anyway she’s seen his eyes enough to remember what they look like. She watches as 22 of her people leave camp. Bellamy takes the lead and disappears into the tree line faster than she expected. She tries to trick herself into thinking that it’s just another hunting trip and he’ll be back by nightfall, but those kinds of tricks never work. She cries quietly out of sadness, and worry, and frustration and she’s really, really glad when Octavia stands next to her and takes her hand. She always feels better with a Blake at her side.


	5. 12

_(12) Are You Living Here? (aka the one that smells like lavender)_

 

Things are going well.

It’s been three weeks since a massive storm blew through and caused a fuck load of damage. Surprisingly everyone’s been doing exactly what Bellamy’s been telling them to do to straighten shit out. Beautiful weather, productivity, good morale, it’s been like living in someone else’s life. Bellamy has always been naturally suspicious of a series of fortunate events. He’s been far too busy anticipating disaster to really enjoy the quiet. Clarke keeps calling him on that.

_Just stop obsessing, it’s like you want something terrible to happen._

Truth is, he just doesn’t know how to not worry about terrible things. Since the day Octavia was born he’s been a worrier and since they stepped off of that drop ship three years ago terrible things had been happening nearly every fucking day. Clarke was obviously the optimist of the pair, but he’s been trying at least.

He spends the afternoon sitting by the fire, talking to whomever passes by, eating a stew that actually tastes like it’s made of meat and vegetables and not old boiled socks. He doesn’t think about the trees around the perimeter of the camp he and Clarke had decided needed to come down (in case there was another windstorm) or the shortage of turkey’s in the area as of late. He looks at the sky as it changes colors and isn’t planning the next day, organizing hunting parties in his head, or calculating how much amo they had to work with before they needed to arrange another trip out to that bunker over the mountain. He’s not worrying about Octavia and wherever she may be with that boyfriend of hers or whether Clarke has bothered to take a break from patching up scrapped knees to eat a decent meal that day. He’s in an unfamiliar mood, it feels almost like being content, like maybe this will actually work and he’s not as fucked as he always thought he was. He’d probably be smiling if he didn’t think it would freak everyone out. 

“Hey Bellamy,” a boy sits down next to him, obviously taking advantage of his good mood to ask something that would have otherwise made him very nervous (he can tell by the kid’s fidgeting hands) “My tent’s got a wicked tear in it, from the storm you know….the weathers been real nice so it hasn’t been a problem but…if it rains…”

“I thought we took inventory of all damaged tents right after the storm?”

“Well yeah…I mean it wasn’t bad right after it happened, but from opening the flap and…it’s just gotten worse.”

Bellamy puts his bowl down and wipes his hands on his pants “I’m sure Siena could mend it, she fixed up Miller’s pretty well.”

“Yeah, yeah I could ask her.” The kid nods, but he’s obviously not done talking “But uh…I mean I know some people aren’t using their tents anymore…when they start staying with someone else.”

“So ask around.”

“Well that’s what I was wondering, has Clarke given hers to anyone else?”

Bellamy blinks and then shakes his head as if that would make the kid’s question any less ridiculous. “What?”

“I was just wondering if Clarke has given her old tent to someone.”

“Clarke got a new tent?”

The kid is staring. He looks confused, almost like Bellamy is trying to play a joke on him.

When he speaks again it’s slower. It sounds calculated and cautious. “I guess I just assumed she wasn’t using it. People have been saying…”

“People have been saying what?”

“Just that she hasn’t been staying in her tent. I don’t know.”

He does know, but Bellamy isn’t going to push it. Honestly, she’s been spending a lot of time in his tent…a lot of nights…in a regrettably platonic way of course… and the rest of them would have to be blind not to have noticed it but that certainly doesn’t mean that she forfeits rights to her own tent. He doesn’t want to ruin his mood by yelling at the kid, so he just stands up and shakes his head. “You’ll have to ask Clarke, but as far as I know her tent is still occupied.”

The weird thing though, which he realizes as he starts walking off to find Clarke to tell her about the kid’s dumbass question, is that looking for her at her tent doesn’t even really cross his mind. Of course that’s probably because it’s barely dark and this time everyday she’s usually just finishing up in medbay or hunting him down to bitch about something. So he ends up at his own tent. When he turns around to face the rest of camp he can still see the kid on the log where he had been sitting, staring down at the ground as if weighing the benefits of asking for his tent to be mended or growing the balls to ask Clarke for hers. Fucking ridiculous is what it is, these kids make the most asinine assumptions sometimes. Acting like her tent is vacant because she hasn’t slept there for a few nights. Although…..it’s been at least a week since he’s slept alone right? Or actually…he can’t really think of the last time he slept without Clarke.

Granted, that didn’t exactly mean much since the nights just seemed to run together and sometimes it didn’t even feel like time was passing down here. But it’s definitely safe to say that she’s with him most nights (doing infuriating things like pressing herself against him in her sleep and allowing him to wrap his arm around her waist, and letting her lips brush his skin when she finally gives in and starts using him as a pillow like she always does). It had started as a one night thing….and then a few days at a time kind of thing…and now it’s just…the way things are. It’s fine really, it’s okay because it’s comforting and they both need to feel like they aren’t alone. They’re stuck in this weird ass limbo where he fucking knows she’s into him and he can’t stop thinking about her, but they’re both so used to life as platonic political partners that anything more seems dangerous and stupid. He wants her around and that’s just the way it is. 

She’s on the ground when he walks into his tent, bent over a faded page of a children’s activity book they’d found in a bunker last month. She’s sketching flowers again, really intricate ones with petals that look like they’re actually coming off the page and sometimes Bellamy thinks if she could only color them in they’d be prettier that the actual thing. She sketches flowers when she’s happy. The small pile of similar pages on his table is growing every day. In fact, there’ a lot more of her drawings on that table than he remembers. Usually it’s covered in old maps and those fucking woodchips, but it’s like she’s made her own little corner: her stack of sketches, Lincoln’s notebook, the little handbook from an old first aid kit that was barely legible, the list of healers in surrounding grounder clans that she’s definitely memorized by now. It’s all neatly stacked and sitting next to the broken clay cup that held her only two pencils and a pen that had never had enough ink to write with (she must have kept it for sentimental reasons he assumes). 

The problem is that she brings shit over here and then keeps forgetting to take it back. That’s why he trips over her boots at night and those weird fur slippers the river clan had given her every morning. That’s why her jacket usually laid on the crate he kept his clothes in, even when she should be wearing it. That’s why her side of the bed is covered with two extra pelts and a pillow made of actual feathers (she claimed his bedding wasn’t comfortable enough, which fueled his princess jokes for almost a week). Her jar of moonshine sits half full under the table, he knew it was hers because he’d drained his in a moment of weakness during the storm. The tins of soaps and lotions and whatever the hell else Monty cooked up and Clarke agreed to test sit in a basket near the flap of the tent, where Bellamy used to keep his own boots. She’s draped an old scrap of blanket (another score from pillaging bunkers) over top of it. They use it as a towel when they take trips down to the river to bathe. He always forgets the basket when it’s his turn, so he usually comes back smelling like river water and sand but Clarke never seems to mind. She hangs the towel outside until it dries and then drapes it back over the basket. He’ll always forget it though because he’ll be damned if Miller and Murphy and the rest of the guys see him carrying a basket of lavender oils and mint soap. It’s really….it’s a lot of stuff actually. 

He raises his eyebrows as he looks around. If she’s noticed him, she hasn’t said anything. He’s counting, searching, trying to find even a corner that she’s left untouched: sketches, books, moonshine, slippers, boots, jacket, blankets, pillow, flowery little fucking basket. 

“Are you living here?”

The question flies out of his mouth before he can even stop it. Clarke jumps, but he’s not sure if it’s his voice or the words that scare her.

“What?” she asks.

He does one more sweep with his eyes before asking again, this time trying to sound more curious than shocked. “Are you living here?”

“I…living here?” she stands up and he can tell she’s uncomfortable. “No, I mean…I thought we were just…I stay here sometimes.”

“Right.” He nods, but he continues to look around at everything. It’s not long before she starts to follow his eyes. “That’s what I thought.” He says.

She looks embarrassed, and that’s super annoying because he didn’t intend for this to turn into an argument and that’s usually the direction conversations head in when Clarke gets embarrassed.

“I’ll just, get all this stuff together.” She grabs her jacket from the crate and he sighs as loud as he possibly can.

“Clarke don’t do this, I didn’t ask you to leave.”

She shakes her head “It’s not a big deal Bellamy, I just didn’t realize…how much I’d brought over.” She picks up the stupid fur slippers and he wants to knock them out of her hand.

“I only said something because one of the kids asked about your tent.”

“My tent?”

“His has a tear in it and apparently he believes that you’re no longer using yours so he wanted to ask if he could have it.”

She shakes her head and sits down on his bed “They’ve noticed. That means there’s probably rumors going around. No one is going to believe that we’re just sleeping in here.”  
He wants to tell her that it’s really not just sleeping when you spend the whole night completely intertwined with the other person, but he’s more focused on keeping her from playing the blame game and vowing never to spend another night in his tent.

“It’s going to have to stop.” She says as she stands again. 

“Clarke…”

“Look, I don’t want it too…but it’s like you’ve always said, this,” she gestures between them “in here is different than what it needs to be out there. They still need us to lead.”

“And that means that we can’t…”

“Yeah. It does.”

They only reason he doesn’t get frustrated is because she looks so sad….and because he sees a lot of logic in what she’s saying. If they think he and Clarke are a thing, they’ll start questioning them, complaining, using the fact that they’re “fucking” as an excuse to disagree with them and act like their being persecuted. Maybe one day, when everyone is older and things are more permanent, there would be a possibility for a life for them without whispers, but for now it wasn’t in the cards. Clarke was right.

She grabs her blankets off the bed and folds them over her arm.

Then again, maybe these kids need to learn to mind their own goddamn business. He and Clarke are adults….a lot of the 100 are approaching adulthood, it may not be as bad as he thought. Today was the first he’d heard of it at all and it wasn’t exactly a complaint. 

“Clarke, what if…”

She shakes her head and walks over to the table to get her sketches. “It’ll be fine.” She says “I’m sure you’d love a little bit of privacy for once.”

No, not really. But she’s trying to keep this from turning into a fight. He has to respect that. She’s obviously just as pissed as he is, but she’s thinking like a leader. When her arms are full of her belongings she stands at the flap of the tent. Its awkward because it’s not really a goodbye, but it’s a something….it’s definitely the end of something. She’s struggling to say anything so he plops down on his bed and decides to resort to humor.

“Damn it Clarke, we didn’t even think about who gets the towel.” He says it in such a serious voice that he can see her running his words through her brain a few times before she cracks a smile. “You can have it, we have a few extra in the med tent.”

He nods and tries to keep his own smile on his face. “You take the basket.”

“Really Bellamy, it’s just soap…it’s not going to make you any less of a man if you smell a little bit like…”

“Just take the basket.”

She sighs and picks it up, placing her books and sketches on top of the soaps and tossing him their towel…which is now his. 

Later that night, after she’s left and he’s laid down to try and fall asleep, he laughs out loud because despite his greatest efforts to avoid smelling like lavender there’s no way that he doesn’t, not when the entire bed seems to smell like her. Surely that had to rub off on him a little bit. Maybe that’s part of the reason people seem to think she’s…

“Bellamy.” 

He shoots straight up and looks around in the darkness. He recognizes her outline only because he’s so used to the ridiculous bun she piles her hair into before she goes to bed.

“Clarke, what are you…”

“I realized I forgot to tell you something.”

“Okay? And it couldn’t wait until morning?”

“I…I guess it can. I…”

He knows she’s about to turn and leave so he leans forward and grabs her arm “What is it?”

“Keller, he said he saw a turkey this morning from the wall.”

He almost laughs “A turkey?”

“Yeah, and you kept going on and on about how you hadn’t seen one around here since before the storm so I…WHOA…”

He smiles and wraps his other arm around her waist to pull her into the bed.

“Bellamy what are you doing?”

She’s not struggling against him (he loosens his hold on her just to make sure) so it’s easy to pull her under his blanket and against his side. “Going to sleep.” He mumbles into her hair.

She tries to make that little satisfied sigh that sneaks out of her sound like a snort “We talked about this, I can’t….”

“But you are, so don’t you think that that means you don’t really care what they think?”

“We’re not even doing anything.”

“Right.”

“So, really there’s nothing for them to even think about.”

“Uh huh.”

She starts moving around, he feels her feet pulling at the end of the blanket, the one with the hole in it. He knows what’s coming.

“I don’t have my pillow, and this…stupid blanket and it’s stupid hole.”

He pulls her further on top of him so her head rests on his chest and her legs are intertwined with his own. “Shut up Princess.”

She’s quiet, but he can tell that she’s probably smiling.

“Turkeys.” He whispers to himself with a laugh. 

She elbows him in the gut. “This is okay though isn’t it?” she asks.

He closes his eyes. Every once in a while he gets the urge to tell Clarke how much she means to him. They usually save I love you’s , for days when they may not come back alive, but neither had dared say it to the other recently. Even when Bellamy had ran out into the storm to make sure the tree that had fallen didn’t kill anyone. Clarke had just gripped his arm and stared at him, and he knew, but she couldn’t say it. She couldn’t say it and he couldn’t either because it meant something different now. There were more feelings to complicate things. But he wanted to say it then, because she had walked across camp, in the dark, with that ridiculous hair-do, pretending to want to talk about turkeys, just because she knew she’d end up in his arms. He loved everything about her. 

“Yeah Clarke, this is okay.”


	6. 2

_(2) Do You Love Him?(aka the one with Clarke’s grounder boyfriend…or whatever he is)_

They never talk about their love lives with each other. Ever.

That’s not to say that what Bellamy had was actually a love life, rather than a string of random hookups and a lot of not so secret admirers, but Clarke, when she had something romantic going on in her life, tried very hard to keep it out of their conversational arsenal.

Since Lincoln had introduced them to his extended family after their relocation, Clarke had gotten along well with the grounder’s younger cousin, Kennedy. He wasn’t nearly as big or intimidating as Lincoln, his skin was lighter and his hair was longer but they had the same dark eyes. Kennedy was a medic in his father’s army. He never discussed his job with her, neither Clarke nor Bellamy even knew how many men were in this army and probably wouldn’t until they agreed to be a part of it, but he was very interested in learning everything that she knew. So when they’d come and visit, Kennedy would stay a few extra days and help Clarke in the medtent.

She’s sure that Bellamy notices the time she’d been spending with the man, but the knowing little smirks and comments about “prince charming” didn’t start until Octavia started making wedding jokes. And it was even worse when she blushed the second the words left the younger girl’s mouth.

She wasn’t actually interested in that. She didn’t have time for that, but Kennedy made her smile in a way she hadn’t really smiled for a long time- since Finn.. He was smart and handsome and she learned so much about grounder culture from the conversations they had. Part of her knew that it wasn’t really a romantic relationship in her own mind, but she could also see that it probably was in his. She was leading him on- that’s the word for it- but it felt so nice to have someone new to talk to- and he had so much information- that she couldn’t really help herself.

“So can we meet tonight or does the Princess have a date with Prince Charming?” Bellamy asks her every time Kennedy comes to visit. They get along, as far as Clarke has seen, but Bellamy still has his reservations about trusting grounders, and he doesn’t seem too fond of the idea of her having a close relationship with one.

“Stop looking at me like I’m a traitor Bellamy, we’re just going for a walk.”

“Take Miller with you.”

“No.”

“Take a gun at least.”

“See you tomorrow.”

It went on like that for a few months. Once, Kennedy kissed her during a snow storm. It was sweet and all, but it was also chaste and a little awkward. Plus Jasper and Monty followed her around making kissing noises for two days until Bellamy caught them and they had to explain why and his face literally lit up with all the potential torments he must have been thinking of. 

_“What was that rhythm about sitting in a tree?”_

She should have shut it down there. 

Kennedy starts trying holding her hand more, and bringing her gifts. She tries to ask Lincoln if she should give him something in return but Octavia overhears and the sexual innuendos chased Lincoln from the tent so fast that Clarke barely saw him leave.  
She really should have shut it down- she had plenty of opportunities- and then one day it’s too late. 

As it turns out Lincoln’s Uncle’s clan (who lived on a mountain range that has once been known as the Smokey Mountains) had very strict traditions when it came to male-female relationships. The gift giving, the visits, the walks were all part of the courting ritual his people used to see if a man and a woman would make a good match- reproduction was such a crucial part of rebuilding their society that it almost became a religious experience. . The well-matched would have meetings with their council, some sort of marriage ceremony that Clarke had never heard the details of, and of course whatever form of happily ever after you could find in a place like this.

When Lincoln told her all of this, she felt so uncomfortable she couldn’t look him in the eye. She didn’t want to get married- to anyone. That was the problem with the Smokies’s rituals – they just assumed that friendship between a male and female indicated reproductive potential. It was bullshit, and she told Lincoln so. 

It doesn’t make it any less embarrassing when Kennedy comes for a visit about six months after they first met. She can tell something is different from the minute he steps into the medtent. His smile is tight and forced. He doesn’t embrace her or grab her hand, he simply nods and clears his throat. Monty and Jasper, who were standing around gossiping, take that as their cue to leave. When they’re alone Kennedy’s smile fades into a frown and he stands rigid in a way she’s never seen before.

“Clarke, I’m afraid that whatever there was between us must end.”

“Oh,” she says “I..um…”

“You are a very intelligent woman and a wonderful healer, but I must always put my own people first. Certain things are expected of me, so as much as I enjoy spending time with you I think it’s best that we remain strictly allies. I hope you understand.”

She’s shocked, really confused, and kind of hurt but nods her head anyway because if she’s learned anything from her time on Earth it’s never to show weakness to a grounder. Kennedy leaves not long after that. Monty and Jasper reappear only minutes after. They are acting so awkward that she’s sure they stayed behind to eavesdrop. She doesn’t really care. She doesn’t want to think about it. So she focuses on sterilizing the equipment she used to pull a six inch splinter out of a boy’s knee that morning. And then Octavia is there and she’s dragging Lincoln behind her and she looks kind of angry so Clarke assumes that she knows more about what Kennedy was talking about than she does. She pushes Lincoln onto the cot closest to Clarke and snaps her fingers like a Queen ( Monty and Jasper leave the tent in a huff, mumbling about being treated like dogs).

“Tell her.” She says furiously to Lincoln, who actually looks angrier with his girlfriend than Clarke has ever seen him.

“Octavia this is not…”

“Lincoln knows why Kennedy broke up with you.”

Clarke pales “We weren’t together. We were friends- you can’t really call that breaking up.”

“Tell her what you did.”

“I was just looking out for my family,” he snaps back “ and for her. you of all people should understand that.”

“Wait…what is going on?” Clarke asks “What do you mean you were just looking after your family?”

Lincoln doesn’t say anything so Octavia sighs.

“Kennedy dumped you because this idiot told him you had sex with Finn.”

Her whole body goes numb, a cold feeling of dread seeping over her like someone had poured water over her head. “What?”

Lincoln is glaring at Octavia, but she doesn’t seem to care, she rattles on without even glancing at him “Apparently the Smokies don’t believe in having sex before your married so Kennedy won’t marry a woman whose not a virgin.”  
“I didn’t want to marry-“  
“It’s not that simple.” Lincoln says in a defensive voice- talking right over Clarke.  
“Then explain it to her because she deserves to know!”  
“It’s nothing personal Clarke. It’s their belief that a healthy marriage and successful childbearing can only occur when both partners have had no other than each other. They’re struggling to repopulate, just like everyone else and they believe that if a woman has slept with a man other than her husband than they will be cursed with infertility or tragedy. It’s their culture, their form of population control, it’s what they’ve been doing for years.”

“It’s bullshit.” Octavia says.  
“And I mean – I wasn’t really interested in Kennedy-“ she tries, but they continue to ignore her.  
“You shouldn’t judge them,” Lincoln says, “There are many differences between your people and mine, and my people and the others, that’s just the way it is.”

“So just to be clear,” Clarke says- trying to process this whole ridiculous mess, “you…told Kennedy about me and Finn?”

“Kennedy is important to the structure of their clan. He needs to marry and reproduce to protect the family line. He was taking a big risk by courting a sky person, if the council had ever found out that you weren’t a…. virgin when you two married he would have been banished.”  
“Yeah but I wasn’t trying to marry him!” she says, “we were friends.”  
“Clarke-“ Lincoln explains, “I told you what was happening-“  
“Yeah but I thought-“  
“It’s not a joke to them.”  
Clarke stares at him, and she doesn’t know what to feel. She’s disgusted and completely embarrassed and some irrational part of her brain feels like she’s being made out like a slut even though all she did was sleep with one boy she thought she was in love with. Its archaic and insulting. Lincoln is right, she has no right to judge, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be pissed about it.

“Could you two…I just want to be alone.”

“Clarke we just…”

“Octavia, seriously not now. Please go.”

They leave and Clarke sits and stews in her anger until the boy from earlier comes back with another splinter and she finds herself lecturing him furiously for almost an hour about carelessness and responsibility. He runs out of the medtent without even a thank you when she’s finished and somehow that just seems to add fuel to her fire.  
She finds Monty, who is working on fucking Moonshine recipes again, now that they’re growing potatoes and corn. He should be sorting through the foliage samples the hunting party gathered yesterday trying to see if anything is useful. She tells him this in a loud voice that sounds pretty much like she’s yelling at him. He drops the jar he’d been holding and it shatters. Clarke loses her patience and storms from his tent.

Raven is walking across camp when Clarke sees her. Walking. Her leg is barely functional and she’s actually walking across camp. Clarke steps in her path and warns her about over doing it. She thinks that she sounds concerned, but Raven raises her eyebrows at her and she knows it just sounds like she’s bossing the girl around. But it’s true, she’s lucky she even survived and it’s fucking stupid for her to just be wandering around when she can hardly hold herself up. She tells her so and Raven looks like she might hit her. Thankfully Miller comes over, Clarke tells him to shave and then storms away from the pair without another word.

She needs to get out. She needs to go sit in the woods and the quiet for a moment. She can’t even hear the sounds of her own thoughts over the hum of giggling and cursing and axes chopping. She just wants to be alone so she can think about all the bullshit with Kennedy and move on, but everyone seems to have other ideas. Two girls come up to her and ask her about dry skin. She tries to answer calmly but really why the fuck are they worried about dry skin? So she takes a deep breath and excuses herself before she says something else she doesn’t mean. She’s not being herself. She needs to get away, to be alone.

“Hey Clarke!”

Her eyes widen and she turns around to see Finn’s smile. They had been getting along, but that doesn’t mean that she wants to see his stupid face right now.

“So I may have gotten bitten by some insect. I don’t think it’s poisonous because you know…I’m not dead but I thought maybe you could look at it?”

“Where did you get bit?”

“Oh, right here on my…” he starts to lift his shirt and she puts her hand up.

“No, no, no I meant _where_ like where were you?”

“Oh….yeah…I was....”

“Out for a little walk again? Rules just don’t apply to you? Never have and never will right?”

He looks shocked. She really doesn’t care. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Me? Oh I’m fine. I’m great. Just living with my life choices, just like you will. Come see me if you start to vomit or pass out but otherwise you deal with it yourself.”

“Clarke, obviously something is wrong….”

“I don’t need this right now Finn. If it’s still bothering you tomorrow come find me. But for right now please just leave me alone.” She walks away from him but calls over her shoulder “And stay inside the fucking walls or I swear to God I’ll have Bellamy on you so quick you won’t even see it coming.”

She knows that’ll piss him off. Good.

She’s been casually screaming at people all day. Only snapping out of it when the occasional person asks her if she’s okay, and then she takes a deep breath and nods and asks to be left alone. She’s stitching up a kid’s busted knee when Bellamy comes to her. He must hear her tell the boy that he’s lucky he isn’t losing his leg and that axes aren’t toys. She doesn’t say it in the kind maternal way she usually does, it sounds more like something that would come out of Bellamy’s mouth, and would result in her punching him in the arm.

“Clarke, we need to talk.”

“I’m busy.”

“When you’re done.”

“I’m busy when I’m done.”

She won’t hold back on Bellamy. He can take it, he’ll understand when she finally tells him, and better yet he’ll give it right back to her. She should have went and started an argument with him hours ago.

“Wilson,” he says to the kid when Clarke has bandaged his knee “go get some dinner kid, try to keep off that knee as much as possible tonight.” He nods and runs past Bellamy before Clarke can say a word.

“Don’t give my patients advice Bellamy you aren’t a Doctor.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

She rolls her eyes and starts to sterilize her hands.

“Octavia came to see me earlier, and then Monty, Raven, Miller, six or seven kids who seemed to think you were about to go on a killing spree. You’ve been walking around here like a psychopath what is going on?”

“Nothing.” She says it slowly, like she’s talking to a child because she knows that irritates him.

“You know that I already know right?”

“Get out.”

“Your grounder boyfriend broke up with you and now you’re going to make everyone else suffer…”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m in a bad mood alright? I’m allowed to be in a bad mood.”

“I’m not doing this with you. If you keep talking to people the way you have today there’s going to be a problem.”

“Don’t fucking threaten me Bellamy!” She snaps at him like she never has before and it’s the first twinge of regret she feels all day. He must see it on her face because he doesn’t get angry. He pursues his lips and sits down on a cot.

“We’re partners Clarke, so I’m gonna give you the benefit of the doubt here. Talk to me, tell me what’s wrong. You’re not being yourself and I don’t need a psycho running around my camp.”

“I thought you said Octavia told you…”

“She said there were personal things that she couldn’t tell me. Which is new for her.”

Clarke takes a deep breath and sits down. “We don’t need to do this Bellamy. I’m fine. I’ll apologize to everyone and I’ll….”

“Did you love him?”

“Did I love him?” she asks- with an actual genuine laugh that slips out because this has been the most ridiculous day of her life. 

“Yeah, were you in love with the kid?”

“No!” she says, “Not at all! We were friends. I thought we were friends!”

“Then what is all this for Clarke? Why is this such a big deal to you?”

“Because! Because….everyone just assumed- forget it. I’m just….pissed. I’m being ridiculous. It’s not a big deal.”

Bellamy looks at her and he knows she’s lying. He narrows his eyes “What did he do?”

“He didn’t do anything.”

“Why did he break if off?”

“We. Weren’t. Together,” she says slowly.

“Don’t bullshit me princess.”

“I’m not! It’s not a break up if you weren’t actually together!”

“Clarke.”

“So, it’s not even something that’s important enough for a discussion.”

“Just tell me.”

“No.”

He leans forward and smirks. “You want to tell me, I can see it.”

“You can’t see anything. I don’t want to talk about this. Least of all with you.”

“Come on,”

“No.”

“Tell me.”

“No.”

“Clarke.”

“Fine, you know what? Fine. He doesn’t want our “relationship”, she says in air quotes, “to move forward because of his … clan’s traditions. Which is ridiculous because as far as I knew our _friendship_ wasn’t moving anywhere.”

“Clans traditions,” he repeats, “What the fuck does that mean?”

She sighs. “He can’t marry me.”

“Because you’re not a Grounder?”

“No because” she takes a deep breath- trying to be clinical, “because I’m not a virgin.”

Bellamy doesn’t say anything, she figures he’s giving her time to explain further…or time for the furious blush on her face to fade.

“Lincoln says that Kennedy’s people believe that a man marrying a woman who isn’t a virgin will prevent him from having a child. He would have been banished if his council found out so…Lincoln told him. And apparently because we’d spent time together that automatically meant we were engaged.”

“How the fuck did Lincoln know?”

“About what?” she asks- so wrapped up in the nonsense of it all that she hadn’t even really been listening to herself talk.  
“About you and Collins?”

“Octavia.”

He shakes his head, “Her mouth, I swear to God.”

“So Kennedy told me we’d be better off as allies. Which is what I thought we were, I’m just a little uncomfortable that my sexual history is now common knowledge amongst the Grounders.”

He thinks for a minute “Me too actually. I. I think Lincoln and I need to have a little chat.”

“Bellamy don’t…”

“I don’t want things like this to happen again. These people seem pretty fucking into arranged marriages and reproductive ceremonies. I’m sure there’ll be plenty more coming around bringing you flowers and holding your hand but the next Prince Charming isn’t going to turn you into a lunatic.”

“Look,” she says, “I really am sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me. You might want to make Raven first on your list though.”

“And Finn.”

“Finn?”

“Ran into him at the absolute worst time,” she sighs and sits down next to him.

“Everyone makes mistakes Clarke. We aren’t like them, sex doesn’t mean the same thing to us…”

“I know. It doesn’t mean that I don’t still feel a little embarrassed. I’ve slept with one guy and someone decided I wasn’t marriable ….”

“Don’t. That’s not how it is and you know it.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Bellamy smiles at her and then stands up “Alright, I’ll go gather everyone for your apology.”

“Stop enjoying this.”

He winks and then he’s gone. Sure, she wants to throw something at him, but the urge isn’t as strong. She has a mess to clean up now. Turns out Bellamy Blake is good for something more than being an emotional punching bag.


	7. 15

_(15) Do you think this is funny? (aka the one where Clarke definitely isn’t a princess in bed)_

 

She wakes up to loud fumbling and furious cursing, which isn’t that unusual for someone who spends almost all of her time with Bellamy Blake. 

“You could be a little louder.” She says through the blanket in her bitter morning voice.

He laughs from somewhere behind her and then her blanket is gone. She rolls onto her stomach to cover her nakedness and buries her face in the pillow. “Fuck you Bellamy.”

“You know, I really wish I had the time.” She snorts because she can feel his eyes on her “but I’ve actually gotta be somewhere.” He throws the blanket back over her, and she’s not sure if it’s for her benefit or his. She rolls over anyway and makes a point to bat her eyelashes at him in the way that always makes him laugh. It works because next thing she knows he’s pretty much crushing her, laughing in her ear and kissing her neck as she tries half-heartedly to push him off. She can already tell this is going to be a good morning, those are pretty hard to come by in their world. 

“Just gonna stay in bed all day princess?” he asks against her skin.

She grips his hair and pulls him up to make eye contact. “I am exhausted,” she says slowly “because of you.”

“Yeah, okay. You weren’t into it at all, that’s definitely how I remember it.” He rolls his eyes.

“You’re the one that took fourth shift guard duty. You can’t come in here at 2 AM and wake me up and….Bellamy… you’re not listening.” His lips are moving down her chest, dragging the blanket away as he goes.

“You didn’t have a single complaint last night.” He says smugly “In fact, I’m half surprised Miller didn’t rush in here with a gun, the way you were scre…..”

“I was not!” she pushes him off of her and sits up “Hand me my shirt.”

He stares at her “Say please.”

She looks straight at him and bats her eyelashes again, this time in the way that definitely doesn’t make him laugh _“Please.”_ She whispers, and that is how she remembers sounding last night, he must remember it too because his eyes darken and she can tell he’s about to press her back down into the bed. “I’m serious Bellamy, I have to get up.”

His mouth tilts up into that little sideways smirk of his that pretty much makes her lose feeling in her knees and she admires his naked torso as he stands up to grab her shirt and bra from the crate. He throws them at her with a wink.

“So what do you have planned for the morning?” she asks.

“Got two trees to cut up.”

“So it’ll be busy day for me then? Or are you actually going to pay attention to who is handling the axes.”

“You’re such a morning person.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

He starts to back up towards the tent flap “I’ll try to come by med tent for lunch. Don’t forget to talk to Raven about the solar panel thing.”

He turns around to leave and Clarke’s eyes bug out of her head. His entire back is covered with scratches, bright red standing out against his tan skin. She almost doesn’t want to draw his attention to it because 1. She doesn’t want to accept the fact that she did that and 2. He’ll be so fucking smug there’ll be no living with him. Of course she has to say something because he’s walking out of the tent without a shirt on and DEAR GOD NO.

“Uh Bellamy, aren’t you forgetting something?”

He looks confused for a second and then he smiles, walks back towards the bed, and drops a kiss on her lips. She’s paralyzed by the sweetness of the gesture for a second because she’s still not totally used to Bellamy being like this. Then he’s walking out again and she has to stop him.

“No, I was talking about a shirt actually.”

He turns and raises his eyebrows. “I think I’ll be okay without one.”

“No.”

“Clarke, it’s gonna be a hundred fucking degrees today. I’m not wearing a shirt.”

“You have to!”

“Uh oh, is some getting a little bit possessive?”

“Oh shut up, you can’t go out with a shirt because….”

“Because what?”

She knows she’s blushing, she can feel how hot her face is “Because of your back.”

He knits his eyebrows together and reaches a hand behind him “My back? What’s…Oh HOLY SHIT.”

She covers her face with her hands as his smug laughter fills the tent. “How the fuck didn’t I feel this this morning? Clarke this is….all the way down! Jesus…”

“Okay, I get it. Can you just put a shirt on.”

“You tore me _up_ Princess.”

“It’s not funny.”

“No, you’re right it’s fucking hot….and a little painful, ow.”

She jumps out of the bed and goes over to the crate to find her pants “I can bring you some salve to put on so it doesn’t bother you.”

“Now do you believe me when I say you thoroughly enjoyed last night?”

“Can you please just put on a shirt?”

“No.”

“Bellamy, everyone will see and….it’ll be pretty obvious how they got there considering there aren’t any cats in camp!”

He laughs “So what? You’re afraid that everyone’s gonna know you’re not a timid little princess in bed?”

“Do you think this is funny? Is this some kind of joke to you?”

“Why are you getting so upset Clarke, it’s couple of scratches. No one’s gonna notice.”

“And if they do? If they do notice?”

He looks a little angry now “Worried that they’re gonna find out what we do in here? Because you’re a little late for that.”

“You know that’s not it.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s…I just….this isn’t just about sex for me okay. I don’t want anyone out there to think that I’m just…It doesn’t exactly look…loving.”

His face melts back into something more understanding as he walks over to her “You know that’s not what this is to me either right?”

“I know…”

“No, I’m serious Clarke. It’s not just sex. If you want me to wear a shirt I will but…this doesn’t make it any less….loving.”

She notices that he has just as hard of a time saying that word as she does…they’ll have to work on that.

“I’m just…not okay with them knowing anything about what we do in here.”

“Okay.”

“It’s between us.”

“Fine.”

“So,” she reaches behind him and runs a hand down his back “I want to be the only one that knows these are here.”

He smiles and tucks a stray hair behind her ear “How can I argue with that logic?”

They kiss until someone (Miller) yells something that sounds like “burning daylight captain!” and tosses a rock at the tent entrance.

“He’s terrified to walk in here because of that last time…”

“Yeah. I remember.”

He grabs his t-shirt from the crate and pulls it over his head. “So I’ll see you this afternoon?”

“Yeah.”

He looks at her at least twice more before he actually leaves.


	8. 3

AN: Okay so all things considering, this story is becoming incredibly AU and it’s driving me crazy because I’ve had a lot of these written for a while and the way Clarke and Bellamy are developing in the show…well it’s definitely impacted my inspiration for this one. I don’t want to stop though, I hate that they feel so OOC but…..I’m just going to consider this a reality that could have been.   
Also, this chapter does touch on the issue of suicide, I’m also going to post the next chapter (which is much more lighthearted) so please, if you’re at all uncomfortable skip ahead.   
Disclaimer: “Your song” belongs to Elton John, I just like the idea of it surviving as a lullaby.   
As always, thank you for reading. 

 

_(3) Can I stay? (aka the one with your song)_

They can both feel it.

The failure that weighs down every step they take.

It feels this way every time they lose someone, because they are the leaders and they should have stopped it. Bellamy usually takes it the hardest. Clarke is still able to think clinically about things. He just feels like he should be able to save everyone. 

They’ve lost two people since they relocated, in the aftermath of their escape from the mountain men and their tentative peace with the grounders. The second one, the one they had just finished burying, had been completely unexpected. A boy named Westley was unaccounted for at dinner. His friends hadn’t seen him for hours. Clarke insists that they send out a search party. Bellamy is so annoyed by the lack of volunteers that he grabs the nearest kid with a gun and marches off to do it himself. 

He finds him less than a mile from camp, along with the extra rope from the supply shed they’d been looking for that evening. The kid he’d brought with him starts puking. Bellamy tries not to seem insensitive and waits until he finishes to send him back to camp to get Clarke, some shovels, and anyone that claimed to be Westley’s friend. Then he sits down in the grass and covers his hands with his face. He’s smelt death before, he’s seen it, he’s caused it, but this was so much different. He was no expert, but it was pretty obvious that this kid had made the decision to die….like Charlotte had. 

He hears people arrive behind him. A girl is sobbing. One of the boys asks if he should cut him down. Clarke puts her hand on Bellamy’s shoulder to remind him that he’s the one with the answers.

“Yeah.” He says “We cut him down , dig a grave, it has to be deeper than before. We’ll pile some rocks on top to keep animals out. Clarke…” he pulls her to the side. She’s wearing that detached look of hers, like this is just another wound she’s stitching up. He knows its bullshit. She feels the same way he does. She’s always been better at hiding things.  
“Can you examine him…make sure he did it himself?”

She nods and walks over to the tree. Bellamy oversees the grave. They don’t speak again until the sun has set. Clarke carries a lantern and illuminates the area where Bellamy and two other boys are filling in dirt. She had to escort the girl back to camp. Apparently she’d started showing early signs of a panic attack and Clarke thought it best to get her as far away from the body as possible.

Bellamy understands, but he still has every intention of speaking to all of Westley’s friends to figure out how the fuck it had come to this. 

“This happened a lot on the Ark.” Clarke says. Bellamy knows she’s right because there were a few times he was called in to clean up the mess.

“It shouldn’t happen down here.” he says.

They finish the grave in silence.

The walk back to camp is strange, because he notices that he and Clarke’s footsteps are perfectly in synch. They’ve yet to master the art of agreement, but he figures it’s their differences that make them good leaders. Tonight though, they walk together as failures. As two people who didn’t notice when one of their own needed help. They’d lost another one.

Clarke’s skin is cold when her hand accidentally brushes against his. He sees her close her eyes every once in a while, like she’s trying to convince herself not to get too upset. He’s already given up that fight. You don’t see something like what he just saw and get a good night’s sleep. He’s half tempted to ask her to stay in his tent for a while. Surely there are things they can work on, things they can plan, anything they can do to postpone those hours of horrible silence when he’ll think about how lonely and scared that kid must have been. The funny thing is, he doesn’t even have to ask.

They talk about preparations for the winter, potential meetings with the grounders, whether it was worth it to teach archery with the few bows they had, and the eventual construction of homes instead of tents. Some of it was so far off that it sounded more like dreams than reality, but neither of them care. Eventually they start talking about ridiculous things: Clarke wants to create a no-beard policy now that the boys of the 100 were becoming men, Bellamy wants to teach the masses a secret handshake to promote unity. They laugh for a while, even though they both feel guilty about it. Hours pass and their eyes start to droop. 

“Shit, it’s late.” He says as he runs his hands over his face.

“Yeah.” Clarke says, she stands but she looks at the entrance of the tent like hell was waiting for her on the other side.

“Bellamy?” her voice is small “Can I stay?”

He knows what it means. She’s just as afraid of those quiet hours as he is. He nods without even a second thought. It’s not that Clarke Griffin in his bed has never crossed his mind, but this is something different entirely. It’s about support, not sex…and that’s something Bellamy is unfamiliar with. But he kicks off his boots anyway, and she does the same. She falls onto his bed first, while he blows out the lantern and by the time he’s at her side he notices that she’s laying on his favorite pillow, and…well that’s just annoying. So he slides his body next to hers and then lifts her shoulder so his arm can wrap around her. Her head leaves the pillow and ends up on his chest. A win, win really.

They’re silent for a while. And then Clarke is humming. She does it sometimes, and it almost drives him crazy because he knows that he’s heard the song before.

“What is that?” he asks through the darkness.

She’s silent for a minute. “Old song. My Dad used to sing it.”

“Do you know the words?”

She doesn’t say yes, doesn’t nod, but after a few deep breathes he hears her quietly whispering 

_It may not be much but, it’s the best I can do. My gift is my song and this one’s for you. And you can tell everybody that this is your song. It may be quite simple but, now that it’s done. I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind that I put down in words, how wonderful life is now you’re in the world._

He could have fallen asleep listening to her. It was the perfect distraction, but he can feel her breathing getting uneasy. She’s not winning her battle. Thinking about her father probably didn’t help things. He doesn’t know what to say so he holds her closer and leans his head on hers and it’s not a big deal, they’ve hugged a few times before.

“Do you know anything about him?” she asks. He knows who she’s talking about and he knows his answer isn’t going to make her any happier.

“I know his name, his father was factory station, he was arrested for attacking a doctor on the Ark when they told him they couldn’t do anything else to save his mother, and he was a shit shot.”

“He liked to walk around barefoot. He kept coming to med bay and asking me to pull splinters out of his heel. He had shoes, I don’t know why he didn’t wear them.”

“He killed a reaper during the escape.”

“Yeah, I helped him and the girl wash the blood out of their clothes.”

“Were they together?”

“I don’t think she felt that way about him.”

“Maybe that was why…”

“I have no idea.” She turns on her side and presses her face into his chest “How could we have missed this?”

“I don’t know.”

“He…we could have...he must have shown some signs or…”

“Hard to keep track of 78 people Clarke.”

“This feels like Charlotte did.”

“Yeah. It does.”

“I'm really glad I don’t have to do this on my own.”

He smiles “I would never let you do this on your own.”

“We’ll have to talk to them tomorrow…all of them, before the gossip starts and,”

“I’ll do it.” He promises before he can even think it through “You just talk to his friends, make sure they’re alright.”

“We should burn the rope.”

“We can’t. We need it.”

“I hate this.”

“Me too.”

She tries to roll back over, to put distance between them, but he stops her. His arm is pretty comfortable like this so…

“Thanks for letting me stay.” She says.

“Thanks for staying.”

They fall asleep in silence. They still have nightmares, but it’s easier to fight them off, fall back asleep, and try again. In the morning they wake and untangle themselves. Bellamy sits on the bed while she pulls on her boots. He’s trying to think of something to say to everyone that will be demanding answers. Clarke stands in front of him, grabs his hands, and pulls him to his feet.

“We should do this together.”


	9. 9

_(9) Does this hurt? (aka the one where Clarke takes Bellamy’s pants off.)_

 

When he sees her coming, he tries to subtly duck into his tent so he can sit down on his bed without her noticing how unbalanced he is. Of course she throws open the flap like she owns the place (what the fuck else is new) and stares at him until he acknowledges her presence. 

“Something I can help you with?”

“You know, I just heard the funniest thing from Miller.”

Bellamy sighs. He knows he’s been caught because no matter how hard he tries, Miller is not funny.

“Yeah, he asked me how many stitches I ended up giving you last night because you were limping around all morning like your leg was falling off.”

“Little shit.” He mumbles darkly.

“Oh he’s a little shit? That must be why you almost cried last week when he got separated from the group on your hunt.”

He glares at her “I did _not_ almost cry.”

“Whatever. Take your pants off.”

Umm…

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me Blake, take them off.” She walks over and stands in front of him. She’s in one of those moods today. One of those super princessy moods where she’s nothing but smartass comments and little smirks.

“I think you’re forgetting that this is MY tent princess. You can’t just walk in here and start giving orders.”

“Your tent.” She repeats “Well if we’re so worried about what’s mine and yours you can just…” she reaches down and pulls at the pelt laying across the bed, the one he was sitting on “give this back, because this is _mine_.” He loses his balance when the she rips the blanket from the bed and in a moment of pain reaches out and grabs the wound on his left thigh. Of course Dr. Clarke notices and the next thing he knows she’s attempting to take off his pants.

“I wasn’t aware that we had progressed so far in our relationship…”

“Your little comments will only make this worse.”

“Don’t pull so hard, there’s a tear in….”

“The left seam yeah I know, I’ve been telling you to ask Siena to fix it for weeks.”

“I can fix it myself.”

“Yeah, like you fixed this?”

She has his pants around his ankles now and is staring at a two inch gash just below where his boxers end on his thigh. It had been a total accident, he’d slipped while he was helping the boys skin a deer. Everyone else had panicked when they’d seen blood and tried to rush him off to Clarke, but Bellamy had desperately wanted to avoid the situation he was now in. There was an extremely proud part of him that wanted the first time Clarke took his pants off to be in much different circumstances. Besides, he’s had worse.

“Bellamy, this could be infected.”

“It’s not infected, I poured my entire ration of moonshine on it last night.”

She raises her eyebrows and bends down to get a better look at it. His eyes immediately dart to the ceiling and he’s forced to start thinking about his experience on latrine duty the week before to keep this from getting anymore awkward than it already is. 

“So this explains last night.” She mumbles.

“What?” How does she not realize how awkward this is?!

“Last night when I came to bed you kept making these weird noises every time you moved. I thought maybe you were having a nightmare, but now I know that you were just in pain because you’re an idiot.”

Well that’s great, the girl he’s sleeping with (and only sleeping….like literally only sleeping) heard him crying like a little girl in his sleep……… And now she’s touching him. 

“Does this hurt?” she presses on the area around the gash and he flinches. “Damn it Bellamy, it’s starting to get infected.”

“How is that possible?” he whines.

She rolls her eyes “Because moonshine is not the end all cure all infection preventing miracle that you people seem to think it is. Stay right here, keep your pants off.” She rushes out of the tent and he can’t resist mumbling angrily to the empty space around him “Yet another phrase I would have loved to hear you say under different circumstances.”   
She’s back a few minutes later and he can see a roll of bandages in her hand. 

“I have to use the wider strips,” she explains because she can see him glaring at them “its easier to wrap around your leg…”

“I cannot fucking stand those bandages…”

“Which is why I brought the cloth ones and not the canvas ones. Cloth isn’t as strong, but you’d have the canvas ripped off before the end of the day so why even bother.”

He doesn’t respond to her because he knows she’s trying to bait him into an argument. It probably means that she is as uncomfortable with the situation as he is. That makes him feel a little bit better.

“Why didn’t you just come to med bay?” she asks, while he’s trying to focus on anything other than the way her fingers keep touching his skin while she covers the wound in that seaweed paste of hers and starts to wrap it in the bandages.

“Didn’t have time.”

She shakes her head like she doesn’t believe him, but carries on tending to his wound.

He’s counted to 321 and tried to remember how to do long division by the time she tells him she’s finished and he can put his pants back on.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed about stuff like that.” She says.

He focuses on buttoning his pants and looks up like he has no idea what she’s talking about. “Stuff like what?”

“Really? So if that wound had been on your shoulder or your knee you wouldn’t have come to…”

“Clarke, I told you it just didn’t seem necessary.”

“I just don’t understand where this lapse in confidence comes from.” She’s smiling, so he knows she’s teasing. She’s doing what she always does when she knows he’s uncomfortable, bringing him back to something that feels better, usually responsibility or anger. She’s still baiting him so that must mean she couldn’t think of any pressing camp matters to discuss. “I mean, there aren’t many girls in this camp that haven’t seen you with your pants off.”

“Can we just go one day… _one day_ …without you bringing that up?”

“Are you out of practice….is that what it is?”

“Shut up Clarke.”

“No really, it’s been a while for you hasn’t it?”

“Probably because most nights my bed already has another occupant and there’s not much room for a third.” His voice sounds bitter, but really he just wants the subject dropped. He sees her face fall though, she succumbs too easily to guilt….and usually over the stupidest things.

“I didn’t …I mean I never thought about…sorry about that.”

“It was a joke. Why are you sorry?”

“Because I shouldn’t be in your bed when you could be using it for…other things.”

He makes sure she’s looking right at him when he shakes his head “I’m perfectly happy with what I’m using my bed for.”

“Yeah but….I mean, I could stop.”

“Don’t.” Its honest, and eager, and he can tell it makes her blush but he doesn’t care. She’s always around and he’s just getting used to the idea that he doesn’t hate it. He certainly doesn’t want any less with her. “My bed is your bed. I mean…you’re welcome to it. It’s covered with half of your blankets anyway.”

“Because yours had holes in them.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t use them.”

“You can’t use them to effectively keep you warm.”

“Well then it’s lucky I have you huh?”

She scoffs, but he notices her blush again “I have to go. Next time you stab yourself, I don’t care where it is, come to me before you end up with gangrene.”

“Yes your majesty.”

“And if you don’t get those pants fixed, I’ll take them while you’re sleeping and you can spend the next day barking orders at everyone in your underwear.”

“I bet that’d be like a fantasy come true for you huh?”

She laughs and shakes her head “I’m gonna leave before your ego suffocates me.”

“If you see Miller, tell him I’m looking for him.”

“If you give him shit for telling me the truth your bed is gonna be pretty cold tonight.”

He tries not to let her see how much the threat affects him. “I’m not afraid of a little cold princess.”

Of course when Miller does show up all he does is pat him on the back and ask him about the reconstruction on the gate. It might be a little strange and it’s pretty much impossible to define but whatever he had going on with Clarke was one of the few things down here that didn’t completely suck.

He’d have to be an idiot to fuck that up.


	10. 1

_(1) “Are we gonna be okay?” (aka the one with gladiators, flowers, and bears OH MY!)_

 

“If you saw a bear you would shit your pants.” 

Bellamy snorts, not because he thinks she’s right (she might be) but because Clarke never curses. The moonshine is making her much more agreeable. He doesn’t mind this so much. 

“I think I could handle a bear.”

She laughs “I don’t.”

They’re sitting on the only guard platform that has been deemed sturdy enough to support anyone’s weight. Behind them, a campfire is burning. They can hear kids laughing, someone singing. Together they look out over their new home, an expanse of forest and mountains that have yet to be explored. 

“What the fuck do you know about bears?”

“What the fuck do YOU know about bears.”

“Did the princess just use the F word?!”

“Shut up.”

She nudges his shoulder and he laughs. They’ve never done this before, just sit and talk about nothing. Alcohol helps, but Bellamy thinks that they’ve both accepted that they’re stuck with the other and the best thing to do is work on some kind of friendship.

“So what’s with the flower?” he points to a small purple flower tucked behind her ear. 

She shrugs and touches it to make sure it’s still there. “Marc gave it to me, he usually brings me a flower when he comes back from a hunt.”

“Oh, so you’re the mystery girl.” He smiles “I didn’t realize Marc had such ambition.”

“It’s not like that,” she says “he’s just thankful. I pulled that bullet out of him after Mount Weather.”

Bellamy drops his head and takes another long drink. “Next time I’ll have him bring you one of the orange ones. You should see them, it looks like they’re on fire.”

“I didn’t take you for a flower man.”

He snorts again.

Clarke let one of the younger girls braid her hair. She looks younger like this. She makes him miss Octavia. He looks out and wonders where she is, whether she’ll really be back by autumn like she promised. Clarke must notice that he’s spaced out. She elbows him and asks some ridiculous question, which he thinks is probably the first thing that pops into her head. Eventually the noise behind them starts to fade out. The moon is really high in the sky and they probably shouldn’t be laughing as loud as they are.

“I don’t understand how that would be appealing to anyone!”

“It’s not the getting eaten by a lion thing or the slaughtering someone in front of a crowd…you’re focusing too much on that.”

“Because what the fuck else is there to focus on?”

“I’m talking about the bravery, you know? Like how much courage it would take to go out there knowing you’re gonna die.”

“That’s a horrible argument.”

“I’m not trying to convince you to be a gladiator Clarke, I’m just saying, it’s interesting.”

“Did a gladiator ever have to fight a bear?”

There are bugs in the trees, glowing a florescent green color. He thinks he’s imagining it at first, and then Clarke notices and she hits him so hard on the arm that he almost falls backwards onto the ground. She starts talking about painting, and somehow that leads to a conversation about pencils, which leads her to Finn.

“It makes me feel sick, the kind of sick where I just…want to pretend it never happened.”

“Can’t say I blame you.”

“He...I just don’t understand.”

“He went through a lot, it breaks some people.” Bellamy tries not to look at her. He wishes they were talking about flowers again. 

“I don’t think it mattered in the end.” She takes a drink.

“Yeah.”

“I loved him, he was…something I thought I’d never get the chance to have you know?”

He nods, but he really doesn’t. He never had time for something like that. “Try not to think about it. The only thing you can do is move forward.”

She tucks her chin into her knees, he can almost see the little green lights on the tree tops reflecting in her eyes.

“Plus, you know now you have Marc bringing you flowers and…”

“Shut up!” she laughs and hits his arm again.

The jar they’re drinking from is nearly empty. It’s stopped burning on the way down and Bellamy has no idea how either of them will be able to climb down the ladder to the ground. It’s a lazy sort of drunk, sitting there just looking at the trees, but he knows it’ll hit them when they stand up.

“You know who’s fun?”

“Who?”

“Drunk Jasper.”

Bellamy laughs and nods “Puts those fucking goggles on.”

It’s not that funny, but Clarke has tears streaming down her cheeks “Tells people to call him Jazzy.”

“He’s a good kid.”

“They all are.” She says it as she turns to look back at the camp, and Bellamy laughs before he looks back too because sometimes he forgets that this whole thing started with 100 “criminals” and a janitor. 

“You’ve built yourself quite the kingdom here Princess.”

She flinches.

“If you don’t want me to call you…”

“It’s not that,” she says quickly “It’s just…Are we gonna be okay?”

He turns back to look at the mountains again, Clarke keeps staring at the camp. “I don’t know.” He says “I think we’ve got a good shot…with both of us.”

“We don’t know what else is out there.”

“Nope.”

“This feels like a beginning though, don’t you think? We’ve been through so much. Now we have a new place, some new people.”

“We’ll take it a day at a time like we always do.”

“A king and a princess.”

“Something like that.” He looks back and meets her eyes, they’re glossy and tired. It’s clearly time for them to turn in. “The bigger problem is how the hell we’re gonna get off this wall.”

She laughs and he thinks she’s probably right, this definitely feels like a beginning.


	11. 17

_(17) What are we doing?(aka the one where Jasper and Monty smile and wink a lot)_

She knows Monty and Jasper pretty well by now, so when they come up on either side of her when she walks out of the medtent…with those stupid grins on their faces….she knows they’re about to tell her something that’s going to piss her, or Bellamy, or both off. 

“So Clarke,” Jasper begins “long day?”

She narrows her eyes at him. Yeah, it had been a long day. She’d spent the last four hours making sure Murphy didn’t choke on his own vomit after he ate some nut that he was pretty much deathly allergic to (which was really strange because she’s still getting used to the notion of not wanting Murphy dead), he’d mumbled smart ass little comments the whole time and Bellamy (paranoid ass mother hen that he is) had been sending people over periodically to check on her. “Forgive but never forget,” he says whenever Murphy is brought up “I’m all for redemption, but I’ll never trust him completely, not after all he’s done.”

She was dead on her feet and she had a really funny feeling that Monty and Jasper were about to make it worse. 

“Headed to bed I bet?” Monty says “It’s awfully late. Bellamy went to bed hours ago, but he was in a really foul mood.”

“What do you two want?”

“Can’t we just walk out old friend home….no? Right listen, we know Octavia and Lincoln are headed back the coast next week.”

Clarke sighed, Bellamy had been stressing and complaining about it for days. “Yeah. What of it?”

Monty took a deep breath. “We want to go with them.”

She didn’t laugh, because that would be rude, but she could hear Bellamy’s resounding “no” in her head. He’d say it was too dangerous, they were too valuable to the camp, if they go others would want to go too and then there would be chaos. Clarke agreed with all of that, but she also knew that Monty and Jasper didn’t do anything for no reason.

“Why?”

“Resources.” Jasper says intensely “We’ve never been to the ocean, we’ve hardly been anywhere. Sure we trade with the grounders but we could be missing out on so much Clarke.”

“You realize they’ll be gone until Spring right?”

“We’ll find our way back.”

“Look, I don’t mean to undermine either of you but…”

“We’re not trackers,” Monty says “yeah, we get it. So we were wondering if we could take someone else with…”

“Now this is turning into a group thing? Guys, winter is coming and…”

“Clarke, there is so much out there. So much we don’t know about, so much we haven’t seen.”

“I know, and I know you feel bored and trapped….I get it.” Sometimes she feels the same “but it’s…very dangerous.”

“We know, we just want you to hear us out. Tomorrow morning at the fire meeting.”

Fire meetings were essentially public forums where people could complain or make suggestions in front of Clarke, Bellamy, and the rest of the camp. Technically they had the right to request the journey whether she permitted them too or not. Although….it probably wasn’t her they were worried about.

“Of course we’ll hear you out.” She says “that’s the way the meetings work.”

They laugh awkwardly “Right.”

She’s standing just outside of Bellamy’s tent now, Jasper and Monty looking at her hopefully.

“Is there anything else?”

“No, no we just wanted to make sure you got to Bellamy’s tent safely.” Monty says.

“Yup.”

“Okay, well…Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, oh and Clarke if you want to…..you know mention this to Bellamy beforehand ….while you’re…sleeping or whatever….”

Monty elbows Jasper so hard his goggles nearly fall into his eyes.

“He just means that Bellamy seemed like he was in a bad mood today, hopefully he’ll be more agreeable in the morning.”

Clarke purses her lips “I realize you two really want to go on this trip, but this conversation is starting to…”

“We don’t mean to sound like assholes…it’s just…he listens to you.” Jasper says.

“We just want to have you in our corner Clarke.” Monty smiles at her and she smiles back a little bit. Once it sounds less like them asking her to fuck Bellamy into an agreeable mood, she finds she’s a bit more comfortable with the conversation.

They walk away about a minute later, waving at her awkwardly and arguing under their breaths. She walks into the tent and kicks her boots off. She can already hear that nasally sound Bellamy makes when he’s sleeping this time of year (She thinks it has something to do with the changing seasons). He’s lying in the middle of the bed with the blankets cocooned around him, and she knows it’s because he wanted to make sure she’d wake him up when she finally came to bed. Somehow she finds it sweet rather than annoying, so when she plops onto the bed and he wakes with a start she almost smiles.

“Hey,” he says as he wipes the sleep from his eyes “everything okay?”

“You mean is Murphy alive? Yeah, he should be fine.”

“That’s good. How about you, how are you?”

“You can go back to sleep Bellamy, we don’t have to talk. I just wanted you to move your ass over so I can go to sleep.” She pushes him playfully and he raises his eyebrows.

“My bed, my rules.” Rather than scooting over he pulls her right on top of him, Clarke just rolls her eyes. 

“Bellamy, what are we doing?” she asks without really thinking.

“Well, I had a few ideas ..unless you’re too tired.”

“That’s not what I meant…I…” she sighs and rolls off of him “Monty and Jasper just kind of cornered me outside of Medtent.”

“About what?” he’s using his stern voice already. 

“Nothing bad….well, I mean they want to go with Lincoln and Octavia to the coast but…”

“What?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Don’t they realize that it’s nearly winter?”

“I told them that…just... that’s not what I’m…”

“As skinny as they are, they’d be frozen to death before the first fucking snowflake fell.”

“Bellamy, stop. Just listen to me for a second. My point is that they were trying to get me to be in their corner.”

“What do you mean?”

“They wanted me to talk to you about it , because I guess they thought I could convince you.”

He scoffed “Yeah, that’ll be the fucking day.”

“It just sounded like….hey Clarke go fuck Bellamy so tomorrow we can…”

“They said that?!”

“No, no…they didn’t mean it like that…I just….I bet some of them think that.”

“It bothers you?”

“I just…what are we doing? We’re this strange amorphous partnership, that sleeps together and leads together and we’re supposed to be a united front but…”

“But you think it makes you look weak?”

“No, I just don’t want them to start trying to use us against each other.”

“So you want to know what this is?” he gestures between the two of them, but the causal voice he’s using makes her think that he’s making fun of her.

“Just forget I said anything.”

She tries to turn her back to him, but he turns quickly and pins her to the bed, an arm behind her head the other on her face, then he’s kissing her and she doesn’t push him away because kissing Bellamy tends to make her forget the rest of the world. It’s like this tiny oasis where she can go and pretend like there aren’t a million and one monsters out there waiting to kill them all. She feels alive when he’s this close to her. 

“That.” He says as he pulls away. She keeps her eyes closed for a second, because sometimes when she does that he starts kissing her again. 

“What?”

“That’s what this is. That is what we’re doing. That feeling.”

He’s not really romantic, he’ll be the first to tell you that, but Clarke knows when his words mean more than what they seem and she certainly knows what feeling he’s talking about.

“Things down here suck most of the time, you and I we’re good at leading because we have each other. We are a united front, and what goes on in this tent doesn’t change that.”

“I think I liked it better when they didn’t know.”

“I could care less either way. I care what they think when we’re talking about the camp but us…I only care what you think. If you want to stop…”

“No, no I didn’t say that. I didn’t mean it like that I just… This feels fragile and I don’t want anything to mess it up. I don’t want to be pitted against each other out there and end what goes on in here before it’s really even started. Bellamy I’ve…never had anything like this before really. I mean Finn was….”

“Clarke, I know, neither have I.” He kisses her again and she hurries to pull away because she has an overwhelming urge to hug him. 

“You’ll listen to Jasper and Monty tomorrow right? You won’t just tell them no…”

“I always listen. They just like to pretend like I’m a hardass because I don’t mind telling them when their ideas are fucking stupid.”

“They want to find more resources and I think…”

He leans his forehead against hers and starts to drag his hand down her body “I think this is a conversation we should have in the morning don’t you?”

Her “yes” is breathy and has him grinning like a smug idiot, but Clarke doesn’t mind.

The next morning, when Jasper and Monty plead their case Bellamy glares at them the whole time, only to agree that the trip would be useful. He still looks a little annoyed but he’s willing to discuss it further and that’s probably more than Monty and Jasper hoped for. They shoot her smiles and thumbs up when she walks back to medtent after the meaning. She rolls her eyes and doesn’t let it bother her. 

Later, she overhears Bellamy tell Monty and Jasper that trying to use his girlfriend against him to gain his approval is useless because Clarke is the real hardass around here. 

She thinks that the word girlfriend is a little weird but….not entirely inaccurate


	12. 6

**Just a warning, there are some mentions of domestic violence in this chapter.**

 

_(6) What is going on? (aka the one where Clarke throws hands.)_

He’s actually having a productive conversation with Lincoln when he hears Raven yelling his name. 

“You need to come to Med Tent.” She says while she tries to catch her breath.

He must not look at her quick enough because she snaps her fingers “Bellamy, now.”

“Why?”

She glares at him “Clarke.”

“What about Clarke?”

Somewhere in the distance someone yells, Raven’s eyes widen. “Stop asking stupid fucking questions and hurry up.”

He hates when Raven acts like she can actually order him around, but there’s definitely more yelling and she’s walking towards it as fast as she can. So he takes off after her and he notices that Lincoln follows…probably because Octavia’s last know location was the Med Tent.

He doesn’t even get the chance to assess the situation when he arrives because the first thing he sees is Octavia pinning Clarke to the ground. 

“Get the fuck off of me!”

“Calm down Clarke.”

“Octavia I swear to God!”

“Keep him over there Raven because if he comes over here one of us is going to fucking kill him!”

They thrash around and curse at each other. Bellamy manages to catch a glance of Clarke’s hand, which is covered in blood. 

“Back off Ray!” This time it’s Raven yelling. She’s screaming into the face of one of their biggest guys who has blood pouring from his nose. He’s cursing furiously and trying to side step her, but Raven is relentless. 

There are also two girls on the floor next to them sobbing into each other’s arms.

Bellamy is trying to figure out just what kind of fucking circus he’s walked into when Clarke breaks away from his sister and pulls herself up. Raven, with her back still turned, doesn’t see Clarke coming. Suddenly, with a fury Bellamy has never witnessed in-person, Clarke shoves her friend out of the way and kicks Ray’s legs out from under him. He hits the ground hard, but not before reaching out and gripping Clarke’s arm. It’s her yelp of anger and pain that puts everything back into perspective. 

He rushes into the tent and grips Clarke around the waist, Lincoln follows behind him and rips Ray’s arm away from her. She’s actually shaking and he can feel the heat coming off of her face. She’s kicking and trying to pull away from him….he’s pretty sure she doesn’t even realize who he is.

“Clarke, Clarke stop! CLARKE!” he spins her around so that she’s facing him “What is going on!”

Her eyes widen when they meet his. She takes two deep breaths and then pulls away from him. “I want him out of camp.” She says as she points back to where Ray is pulling himself off of the floor. “Tonight!”

“What happened?”

“I WANT HIM OUT!”

“Not until I know what’s going on! Calm the fuck down and talk to me!”

She’s still trying to catch her breath and he can see tears in her eyes but he’s not sure if they’re from anger or if her hand feels as bad as it looks.

“He… he’s been hitting Maize.” She says nodding her head to one of the girls on the floor “She’s been coming to me for weeks Bellamy, _weeks_ , and giving me these excuses for broken wrists and bruised ribs and all this time it was HIM!”

“Are you sure…”

“HE ADMITTED IT! HE ADMITTED IT AND THEN HE ACTUALLY TRIED TO SWING ON ME.”

“Clarke, stop yelling!”

“DON’T TELL ME TO STOP YELLING! HE’S A DISGUSTING HUMAN BEING AND I WANT HIM GONE!”

Ray mumbles something that sounds like _“Fuck you bitch”_ and Lincoln knocks him back to the ground with a swipe of his arm.

Bellamy grips Clarke’s arm again, because she’s glaring at Ray like she’s contemplating strangling him to death. “Raven, O, can you get these girls out of here?”

Raven and Octavia wrap their arms around the girls and pull them to their feet. “Please don’t make him leave.” The girl named Maize says “I didn’t mean to start all of this…I just..”

“Go on with Raven and Octavia, calm yourselves down and then we can figure all this out.”

They disappear through the tent flap, but he can hear the girl’s sobbing echo as they walk away.

“She’s terrified.” Clarke says “He’s supposed to be her boyfriend. She thinks she’s in love with him, and he’s fucking abusing her.”

“You don’t know anything!” Ray grunts.

“I know what you’re doing isn’t love, banishing you would be the best thing that ever happened to her.”

Ray stands up quickly, like he’s actually going to charge her, and Bellamy steps in front of her and raises the gun that had been slung over his shoulder. “You wanna die today?” 

Ray shakes his head.

“Then sit the fuck down and shut up!” He turns back to Clarke. “We’ll lock him up.” He says “We’ll talk to Maize once she calms down and he’s not around and then we’ll give him a trial. If he’s found guilty he’s out.”

“What about her!” Ray yells, although it’s harder to understand him as the blood in his nose starts to clot “She put her fucking hands on me. She broke my nose. She…”

“What the fuck did I just tell you? Sit down and shut up!”

“This is bullshit!”

Bellamy walks towards him, Lincoln still standing in the background in case the kid makes a move, “You deserved it and you know it. Abusing anyone, especially someone that loves you is absolutely disgusting. And this is just the beginning, because if I find a single bruise on her from the shit you just pulled,” he points back at Clarke who is thankfully staying quiet “I will break every bone in your body, understand?”

Ray’s glare actually makes him uneasy, but Bellamy has no intentions of showing weakness, so he smiles and nods to Lincoln. “Let’s get him out to the wall and chain him up.” 

Together they grab his arms and drag him forward. “Stay here Clarke.”

“But..”

“Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

About ten minutes later, when he leaves Ray in Miller’s charge and sends Lincoln to check on Octavia and the girls, he returns to the med tent.

Clarke is washing the blood from her hand. She looks like she’s going to be sick.

“Tell me what happened.” He says when he sits down next to her. 

She doesn’t even hesitate. “Maize kept coming in with injuries. I saw the signs, it happened sometimes on the Ark, so I asked her. Then she stopped coming, but I saw her limping around camp this morning so I pulled her in here. He showed up and told me to mind my own business. He said what went on in their relationship was between them. I told him that we’d banish him for what he’s been doing to her. Maize started crying and when I turned to talk to her he grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled so I punched him.”

“Yeah you did.” He said with something a little bit like a smile. “His nose probably won’t ever look the same. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“It’s not funny Bellamy.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“I’m a healer. I'm a leader. I shouldn’t act like that.”

“Yeah you are a leader, and you were protecting your own.”

“Look, I really don’t want to talk about this anymore okay?”

She stands up and tries to walk away but he steps in front of her. The next thing he knows his arms are wrapping around her and he’s pulling her into him for the kind of hug he usually reserves strictly for Octavia. She doesn’t fight him. Her hands bunch into his jacket and her head falls against his chest in exhaustion. 

“Did he hurt you?” he asks.

She shakes her head.

“I’m gonna take care of it.”

“No, the trial was a good idea.”

He realizes that they’ve been hugging for a really long time, but it’s not as weird as it should be. I mean…if you combine all the times they’ve hugged…it probably equals this one so this is still familiar ground really.

“You’re fucking incredible you know that?” he whispers and okay yeah, that’s toeing the line a bit. 

Clarke shakes her head against his chest and he grips her tighter, looking down and speaking into her hair.

“You’re strong Clarke, you’re strong and you’re willing to do anything to protect your people even from themselves. What more can someone ask for in a leader?”

“Level headedness and Composure?”

“Well I’m proud of you, for standing your ground and protecting Maize.”

“You think it’s okay that I punched him?”

“No. He deserved it but you shouldn’t have pulled that shit without anyone else around. You could have been hurt.”

She pushes away from him and glares “Octavia was here, and I handled it didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did and luckily you’re alright but he could have seriously hurt you and then we’d be out a functional medic and he’d be dead.”

She rolls her eyes “I don’t need an overprotective brother Bellamy.”

He snorts “I’m definitely not trying to be your brother.”

She looks at him and he realizes that what he said was a tad awkward….made even more so by the fact that they were still touching. He pulls his arms back to his sides and takes a step back. 

“Thanks though, for stepping in and having my back.”

“Always.” He says “that’s what I’m here for. You’re the brain and I’m the brawn.”

She smiles “I’m gonna bandage this and go talk to Maize.”

“Okay. Fill me in later though alright?”

He’ll keep an eye on her for the rest of the day…just in case she’s lying about being injured. He also may find the time to punch Ray in the throat because the fact that he put his hands on Clarke just isn't okay. She might not be his sister…but she still means a lot. He likes that she can take care of herself though…loves it actually.

It turns out he’s pretty lucky to have her as his partner.


	13. 18

**AN: For this one, let's just imagine that they taught Shakespeare on the Ark. As always, thanks for reading!**

_(18) What time is it? (aka the one in the middle of the night)_

The sound of him putting his boots on is so familiar that it barely wakes her up. She does peak her eyes open enough to notice that it’s still dark though….and that’s not right.

She rolls over and sees him sitting on the edge of the bed, his back facing her.

“What time is it?” she reaches out to touch him but he jumps away from her, turning quickly as if he expected it to be someone else. He tries to turn back away, probably because he doesn’t want her to read the look on his face, but she gets enough of a good look to sit up straight and rub the sleep out of her eyes.

“Where are you going?” she asks, instead of jumping right in and forcing him to talk about it.

He sighs “Walk.”

As she wakes up she can hear the rain pelting the tent, thunder in the distance, wind whipping through the camp. “You’re not going out there.” she puts a hand on his shoulder and he shrugs it off.

“I don’t want to talk.” He says “I just need a minute …”

“Nightmares again?”

“Clarke.”

“Was it the one about Julius Caesar? Alexander the Great?” she’s not trying to sound like she’s mocking him, _honestly_ but it’s weird right? Dreaming in ancient tragedies.

“Gaius Marius.” 

“Greek?”

“Roman.”

“What happened?”

He turns and looks at her “Go to back to sleep Clarke.”

“If you talk about it then…”

“I don’t need to talk about it. They’re stupid dreams. It’s just stuff I remember reading as a kid okay?” he runs his hands through his hair.

“Bellamy, take your boots off.”

He sits there and refuses to look at her…because he’s a stubborn ass.

“It’s raining. Stay here.”

She’s about two seconds away from resorting to seduction when he finally leans down and unlaces his boots.

“I’m not talking about it.” He says.

She watches him out of the corner of her eye as he throws himself back down against the bed. Seduction it is then.

“Did you ever think that maybe I like hearing you talk about that stuff?” 

He snorts.

“I’m serious, it’s hot.”

“What you’re trying to do is not working.” He says.

“What am I trying to do?”

“Trick me into telling you about my dream.”

“I know about your dream.”

“Oh okay.”

“I do. You dream about great leaders who have failed, or made mistakes, or caused chaos. Men who’ve died horribly and you compare them to yourself because you don’t want this. I’m not stupid Bellamy and I listen when you talk. I know you don’t want to be hero worshiped, you put this ridiculous pressure on yourself and.....”

He groans and then he’s laying on top of her and she can’t tell if he’s trying to kiss her or crush her.

“What are you doing?”

“Shutting you up.”

“Well, it’s not going to work. We need to talk about this. I’m sick of you losing sleep over…Bellamy stop….Ow don’t bite me!”

He laughs and eases onto his elbows to take some of the weight off of her. Then he starts nosing at her neck and she has to pinch her eyes together to stay focused.

“No, No you can’t distract me, not this time. I know about nightmares Bellamy and you can’t just pretend like you’re not upset. We have to talk about this. We have to talk about this phobia of leadership…and success…and…” she trails off with a strained kind of moan that makes him chuckle. 

“You were saying?” he’s focusing his lips on that one spot on her neck that makes her stutter….his _seriously Clarke, shut the fuck up unless you’re saying something dirty_ spot…and it’s a challenge for her to keep talking, to pretend she doesn’t feel him everywhere, to pretend that she isn’t counting down the seconds until he’s closer to her. The words float around in her head like the lyrics to a song she hasn’t sang in a while. She remembers reading it back on the ARK, because it meant something to her…even then and she wasn’t the biggest fan of literature….or of Shakespeare. 

“Be not afraid of greatness.” She whispers and messes up his hair just to try and throw him off his game “Some are born great.” He glances up at her and tries to look annoyed even though he’s smiling. “Some achieve greatness.” His smile slides into a smirk and she feels his hand start to brush up her thigh ( this is a Plan B she thinks…since shutting her up doesn’t seem to be working). “and some have greatness thru…..fuck…thrust upon them.”

He laughs “I think you messed up that last part.”

“And you know what Bella…God…”

“No, its Bellamy you had it right the first time.”

“I think you’re all three.”

He stops moving his fingers, and she kind of wants to punch him for it, but then he’s leaning over her, pushing her knees further apart so he can fit between them.

“All three huh?”

“You were always going to do great things, here…the Ark I doubt that it mattered in the end. It was forced on you down here but….God, you still haven’t realized what you’ve done for all of us. You have these stupid nightmares about men you’ve read about, men that no one has ever compared you to, you read these stories and you remember their successes and failures and you doubt yourself. You can’t see it. You can’t see that you’re a hero and leader and a good man, because you’re so worried about doing something wrong, you’re so worried about how they’ll remember you…like you’d rather not be remembered at all and it’s….” she laughs “honestly it’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. I’ll write you into a history book myself, because I know more than anyone everything you’ve done for these people.”

“You’re killing the mood princess.” But the stare he’s giving her makes her squirm.

She rolls her hips upward and smirks “Doesn’t feel like I killed the mood.”

“Yeah, see that’s because I’m just focusing on how fucking gorgeous you look all flustered and laid out under me, I’m not listening to the words…”

She pulls his lips down to hers “I’ll say the same thing every day, until you do listen.”

They kiss like they usually do, like it’s a contest to see who can hold their breath the longest, or make the other one moan the loudest, or who can make the other’s heart speed up past the point of human functionality. Suddenly Bellamy stops, he just stops and pulls his lips away and buries his face in the pillow next to her head for a minute. She’s worried because Bellamy doesn’t pull away, he doesn’t concede, he doesn’t stop until she sees stars and even then she has to reign him back in.

“Hey,” she tries to pull his head back up to meet her eyes “What’s wrong? Bellamy talk…”

“I love you.” he says in a voice she’s never heard before. It makes every square inch of her body feel warm.

“I know, I…”

“No, you don’t. You don’t know, you don’t understand. I love you.”

“Bellamy.”

“I don’t deserve too, and I don’t really know how….and I should probably have something better to say but…I love you.”

“Bellamy, I know.”

He scoffs “Yeah, I know I’ve said it before but I don’t mean it like..”

“I know how you mean it.”

“I’m in love with you, I love you, like…”

She smiles and kisses him until he stops sputtering words like he’s in pain.

“I love you too.”

He stares at her, it almost looks skeptical. 

“You want me to say it again?” she smirks.

“Yes.”

“I love you.” 

He starts kissing up her throat again.

“Again.”

“I love you.”

“Say my name.”

She laughs, “I love you Bellamy Blake.”

Later, after the rain has stopped and he’s exhausted them both (in the best way) she’ll say it to him over and over because part of her worries he still doesn’t believe it. She didn’t come down to earth expecting a love story…and she certainly didn’t expect to find anything but amicable comradery with Bellamy Blake but now…it feels like this was always how it was meant to be.


	14. 4

_(4) How bad could it be? (aka the one where Bellamy almost loses an eye)_

 

“If I’m gonna lose the eye just gouge the other one out too.”

“Bellamy, stop.”

“I’m not gonna live the rest of my life seeing the look on people’s faces when I tell them that I was mutilated by a seventeen year old girl.”

“It’s just a scratch.” She puts her hand on his chin and moves his face back and forth so she can further examine the wound. “It’ll be fine.”

He jerks his head away and scowls “Get off me, I don’t trust your kind.”

She laughs and it almost makes him feel better. “We have to talk to them about this.” She says “It’s gone way too far.”

“I was thinking something more along the lines of punishment.”

“It was an accident.”

“It was an accident when they got me, but I’m pretty sure they fully intended to hit each other in the face.”

“God this is a mess.”

“We aren’t their parents Clarke. It’s not our responsibility to mediate their petty problems.”

“Someone has to do it.”

“Then you do it.”

“We’re a team.”

“I didn’t see you jumping in to break them up.”

“I’m the one that threw the water!”

“Oh, right I forgot that not only am I bleeding I’m also _soaking wet_ , thanks for that.”

“We just need to sit down with the three of them and talk this out. How bad can it be really?”

“How bad? _This_ bad Clarke, it can be this bad.” He points to his face. 

“It’s just a scratch.”

“I’m not going to be involved with this. If you want to talk it out with them, you’re on your own.”

“It’s just a conversation, it’s not a big deal.”

Well, as it turns out they’re both wrong. Bellamy most certainly is involved in it (because Clarke reminds him several times with a glare that makes his skin crawl that he once promised her she’d never have to do anything on her own) and it’s not _just_ a conversation (although it ends up being more of a trainwreck than a big deal). 

Clarke sets up a meeting with the two girls whose cat fight had nearly blinded Bellamy and the boy they were fighting over. She arranges crates for all of them in a circle where they can sit and “put everything out there”. Bellamy laughs in her face. As long as they’ve been on earth she still doesn’t seem to understand the basic nature of a teenager: emotional upheaval and absolute destruction. He puts ten minutes worth of effort into thinking up excuses to get himself out of this before the first girl shows up.

Helena. She’s young and freckled, her hair pulled into braids on either side of her head. She won’t look either of them in the eye and when Clarke asks her how she‘s doing, the girl bursts into hysterical tears.

Bellamy looks on in horror. He’s actually amazed at how quickly her crying escalates. He imagines this is what it must look like when a nuclear bomb drops onto a hydroelectric dam. Needless to say….he’s about as out of his element as he’s ever been and he’s sure Clarke can handle this one on her own…girl talk and all that. He stands up to try and excuse himself but Clarke grabs the arm of his jacket and pulls him back into his seat.

Then the second girl walks in, he suspects this is the one that clawed him. She’s taller, probably a bit older, with long blonde hair and a face that just looks rude. Her name is Nova, she takes one look at the sobbing girl sitting in front of them and bursts into laughter. Thankfully Helena actually stops crying and the four of them sit in an uncomfortable silence until the object of the girls’ affection comes strolling in.

Hahn. He’s an idiot. He’s one of a few that Bellamy refers to as “red flags”, these kids aren’t permitted to use weapons or other pointy objects without direct supervision. Bellamy doubts that he’s actually as stupid as he acts, but he will do anything for a laugh and that’s dangerous down here. Dealing with his bullshit is something Bellamy is familiar with. So when he starts grinning at them like this is the most amusing thing he’s ever experienced, Bellamy fixes him with a withering glare. “Sit down and keep your mouth shut unless someone speaks to you.” 

Clarke starts their conversation by lecturing them on how stupid it is (in their very small numbers) to fight amongst themselves, then she goes on about first love and mistakes made out of passion, and finally she invites them to talk out their problems, and that is when it all goes to hell. 

Helena manages to choke out something like a love story through her tears. She says she loves him, and he’s helped her to learn to love herself, he’s the only thing that’s gotten her through the loss of her family on the Ark. She says that Nova is only interested in sleeping with him, that she doesn’t know the real Hahn and that he only uses her when Helena is busy.

This of course gets Nova all fired up. She starts screaming and accusing Helena of being a liar. She tells her that Hahn’s been to her tent every night for the last month because he’s lost interest in Helena. Clarke has to intervene when she starts to narrate some really sexually explicit stories about their time together. Helena is in tears, Nova is practically sharpening her fucking nails, and when all eyes finally fall on Hahn, he ruffles his hair and with a straight face announces that he honestly has no idea why he’s there. 

That was point A (the complete unraveling of Clarke’s plan to mediate), point B (the actual trainwreck) begins when Nova brings up Clarke’s….relationship with Finn while he was still with Raven. Clarke’s face is pale, her lips in a tight line. She tells them that she had no knowledge of Raven at the time and since then the three of them had managed to rebuild friendships. Nova simply rolls her eyes and starts to verbally attack Helena again. Five minutes later and Clarke is crouched in front of her, trying to convince her that “no, this isn’t a heart attack Helena, you’re just upset. Try to breathe.” And while Clarke is trying desperately to bring Helena back to a state of calm Hahn compliments her on how she “glows when she’s healing someone.” Bellamy can feel the look of disgust slide onto his face, and it’s his absolute hatred of Hahn that gives him the guts to step in the middle of it all. 

“Enough.” He says, loud enough that everyone can hear him over the crying and the cursing. “You,” he points to Hahn “out.”

“But…”

“I’ll deal with you later.”

“I can’t just…”

“GET OUT!”

Hahn rushes from the tent, hair-ruffling , devil-may-care attitude totally abandoned.

“You two, sit down, shut up, and listen.”

Clarke retreats back to her crate as he commands the other girls’ attentions. “You two need to stop this. You’re both beautiful, smart young women. You’re letting that fucking idiot pit you against each other. There’s no winner here okay? He loves watching you fight over him and you’re giving him exactly what he wants. You’re both better than that.”  
Both girls are staring at him like he’s crazy but….he thinks he’s saying all the right things…he’s saying what he’d say if it were Octavia in their place. “Clarke’s taken time out of her day to try to deal with this, you nearly blinded me, and you’re setting a horrible example for every other girl in camp. This stops today, and if it doesn’t, I’ll cut lover boy right down the middle and each of you can have a half.”

Now they look terrified….oh well.

“I’ll do it too, one less mouth to feed. He’s not worth this and I won’t hear another word about it. You don’t have time to act like children down here, we all have to be adults or we won’t survive. There are more important things that you should be focusing on. Understand?”

They nod. 

“Good. Out.”

When they’re alone Clarke tries to glare at him, but he can tell she’s grateful. He’s getting better at reading between the lines with her.

“Well that was….”

“More effective than your attempt at mediation?”

She smiles “You know, hidden under that horrific threat was some pretty great advice.”

“Oops.”

“I think you’re better at this than you want to admit.”

“You forget that you’re talking to the only big brother in Ark history. Is it that surprising that I’d be good at chasing boys off?”

She laughs “I appreciate the help Bellamy.”

“I’m not here willingly.”

“No, but you kept your promise.”

He did, and despite the fact that that was a complete fucking disaster he’d do it again, because he wants their partnership to work.

“Well hey, you threw water on a cat fight to save my face. I owed you.”

She walks over and squeezes his hand “Seriously, thank you.”

He honestly just wants to move away from this whole thing…and get the fuck out of that tent…so he wraps an arm around her shoulders and leads her towards the fresh air. 

“Let’s go eat Princess, on the way we can look for more problems to solve.”

“No rest for the wicked.”

“Or King Bellamy.”

They notice Nova and Helena sitting next to each other at dinner that night. Clarke gives him all the credit, but one day he’ll tell her how thankful he is that she is who she is. If she wasn’t there to care he’s not sure who would. So yeah he’ll take the praise, and he’ll listen to Clarke tell Monty and Jasper about the whole thing with tears of laughter in her eyes, but he’ll also give her a quick hug that night before she goes to sleep (which isn’t an everyday thing) and hopefully she’ll just understand.


	15. 16

_(16) What do we do? (aka the one that hurts)_

“So what do we do?” she asks- her face still burning from screaming at him for the last hour.

“Maybe this-“ he motions back and forth between them, “maybe this was never meant to be a- romantic thing- maybe we fucked it up.”

“Is that what you think?”

“I don’t know what to think Clarke,” he lays back on the bed and covers his eyes with his arm.

She sinks down onto the rickety stool by the tent entrance and sighs. The skin under her eyes feels tight – like if she takes too big of a breath she’ll just burst into tears and that’s a terrible feeling because she doesn’t just do that. She isn’t a crier and she’s a fucking idiot for putting herself in a situation that makes her a crier.

“I have no interest in this,” she says, “I know that arguing isn’t exactly a novel concept for us but – not like this. This is different.”

She waits patiently for him to answer.

“I don’t know what you expect me to say to that,” he finally mumbles.

They sit in silence – in the distance someone is chopping wood, someone else is laughing, there are a couple of birds chirping, but somehow that just makes it all worse.

“Bellamy,” she finally says, “what happens if I get up and walk out of this tent right now?”

When he sits up, he avoids meeting her eyes, “Is that what you want to do?”

“Yeah.” She says.

His face darkens, “Then go. You want to do whatever you want right? It’s not my place to tell you-“

“Don’t twist my words.”

“Twist your words?” his eyes widen, “You told me to mind my own fucking business in front of the entire camp!”

She shoots to her feet and marches over to him, “You cannot start treating me like I’m some fragile little piece of glass-“

“Oh excuse the fuck out of me for not wanting to see you break every bone in your lower body.”

“I can handle myself!”

He slowly rises to his feet and lowers his voice, purposefully talking to her like she was a child. “You were going to spar with Ritchie- that kid is a fucking monster, he spends half his time out there drilling and he has no goddamn depth perception.”

“He was teaching me-“

“He would have broken you in half without even realizing it. He’s an idiot.”

“When did this start?” she demands, “You used to insist that I learn hand to hand – you made me study archery for hours-“

“Clarke,”

“You told me my arms were weak – that I had no instincts-“

“Because-“

“But you let me work at it, you encouraged me, you wanted me to be strong enough to take care of myself and now, a few years go by and we start sleeping together and suddenly you don’t think I can handle it? You want to call me out in front of everyone, and forbid me from-“

“Clarke,” he points a finger in her face, “you would have gotten hurt okay? You wanna spar with Monroe or Misty fine , maybe even Darren. Ritchie would have-“

“This isn’t about what Ritchie would or wouldn’t have done! This is about you, it’s about you and me and the way everything has changed-“

“Nothing has changed Clarke. Haven’t you noticed that I’ve spent the last five fucking years doing everything in my power to keep you and the people in this camp safe?!”

“No this is different – you look at me different-“

“What are you talking about?!”

“There was a time when you would have stood by and watched me spar with Ritchie without batting an eyelash.”

“Oh Bullshit-“

“If something would have went wrong you’d have killed him- I’m not denying that, but you would have let me try. You would have stood there and watched me and told me what I was doing wrong-“

“So what are you saying?”

She bites her lip and struggles to look him in the eye. “When we started doing this you promised me nothing would change-“

“It hasn’t!”

“It has! Because now when you look at me you don’t just see you’re partner you see your _partner_ and if I break a couple of bones, well I guess that means I’m out of action for a few weeks and-“

“That’s what you think this about? Are you fucking joking?!” His voice is louder than she’s ever heard it.

“Stop screaming at me!”

“You think I’m worried about you getting hurt because I wont be able to fuck you?! Have you lost your goddamn mind?!”

“Then what the hell is with you lately?! Why are you on my back constantly, worrying about me getting sunburn or not sleeping enough or-“

“I have ALWAYS worried about all of that. I have been nagging you nonstop for years- you do the same to me, we’ve had arguments about this multiple fucking times Clarke-“

“But this is-“

“No it’s not different! You’re just determined to ruin this.”

“What?!”

“Just get out. Mission accomplished. I’m out.”

“You’re _out_?!”

“I’m out. I’m done with this.” He’s staring at the entrance to the tent but he keeps glancing at her and for the first time in hours it looks like he actually wants her to argue with him.

“I don’t think it’s that easy Bellamy.”

“Why not? We spent years running this place with a barely functional friendship. We can do it again,” his voice is strange- almost lifeless, like speaking is completely exhausting him. 

She’s pretty sure that going back to the way things used to be isn’t possible, but she can’t even imagine the horrible things they may end up saying to each other if she lets this continue. So without another word she leaves his tent. 

For a week, they don’t so much as stand within three feet of each other. Clarke spends most of her time observing construction of the new med building- and bandaging up the wounds that result from hours of untrained labor. 

She tries not to pay attention to what Bellamy is doing – or how unbelievably cold the nights are – but she hears from those who cant escape him that he’s absolutely unbearable. 

But she’s determined not to be the first one to break. At least until Miller comes to her at 5 AM – begging her to speak to him.

“I’m sure he’s been worse.” Clarke says as she sits up and wipes sleep from her eyes. Miller has just finished telling her about the “absolute fucking horror story” that was guard duty last night.

“I don’t think he’s sleeping.” Miller says, “he keeps calling everyone by the wrong name – he tried to make Murphy run laps Clarke – laps, what the fuck is that?”

“Running is a good thing – it’s important for building endurance and-“

“Whatever the hell happened between you two- fix it because its only been a week and those people are already forgetting who Bellamy really is.”

“Miller you don’t understand-“

“This is exactly why I was against you two doing...... whatever it is your doing.” Miller snaps.

“Look I understand that your frustrated but Me and Bellamy are none of your business,” she stands up and grabs her jacket, “and besides we aren’t doing anything anymore.” She storms from her own tent, Miller yelling “fix it!” at her back. 

The way she spends that afternoon is completely spiteful and incredibly stupid. Ritchie meets her in the sparring ring, and he promises her that he’ll teach her three moves that will totally incapacitate a grown man. And he tries- for about an hour, and Clarke keeps up, and then Ritchie gets excited because Clarke blocks one of his blows and in his enthusiasm he comes at her just a little bit too hard. She falls flat on her back with a resounding SMACK. Everyone within a hundred feet turns to look at her, especially when Ritchie lets out a “Oh shit Clarke, I’m sorry!”

The wind gets knocked out of her, but she’s pretty sure she’s alright. It takes her a minute or so to catch her breath, and there’s a pain blossoming in her lower back, but nothing is broken and she’s pretty sure she didn’t hit her head.

“Clarke what the hell are you doing?!”

She hears his voice before she even sits up all the way. Ritchie was crouching above her- but she sees him take a frantic step back as Bellamy comes into her line of vision, absolutely fuming.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

She squeezes her eyes shut, “Yes.”

“Did you break-“

“I said I’m fine.”

When he reaches his hand out to help her up she smacks it away. She gets to her feet slowly and purposefully looks away from him as she brushes herself off and everyone around them goes back to what they were doing. 

“Well congratulations,” he says “you have my attention.”

She turns around and glares at him, “I couldn't care less about your attention.”

He shoots her an intentionally malicious smirk, “So you meant to let Ritchie knock you on your ass?”

“Bellamy,” she warns, “leave me the fuck alone.” She starts to storm away from him, but he follows after her. He may have enjoyed being smug, but she can still feel his angry eyes on her back.

“Do have any idea how crazy you just made yourself look?” She continues to storm away from him.

“Clarke!” he follows her across camp, his voice getting even angrier as she pushes her way through the gate and into the woods.

“Will you just stop throwing a fucking tantrum and listen to me?!”

“Why should I listen to you?” she stops walking and turns around to face him, “You’re walking around here acting like you’ve never hated anything in the world more than me.”

“That’s fucking ridiculous,”

She points behind her towards the camp. “They were afraid to say my name in front of you!”

“You actually think that I would ever be able to hate you?" His eyes are wide, his hands almost shaking. She hasn’t seen him this upset in a long time. "Clarke I would take a fucking bullet for you- and you know it.” 

“Don’t make me out to be the only one here being dramatic,” she says in a much calmer voice, “you’ve gone unbelievably out of your way to avoid me and all because of stupid little argument-“

“Stupid little argument? Do you have any idea what it feels like for someone you’ve done everything you possibly could to protect to accuse you of only caring about the sex?” he takes an angry step towards her, “after everything we’ve been through and you have the fucking nerve to tell me that I’m protective of you because I look at you like you’re some kind of property.”

“Bellamy-“

“Don’t _ever_ assume that you have any idea how I’m feeling or what I’m thinking because you obviously fucking don’t.” 

She takes a deep breath and watches him pace back and forth. “I don’t want to fight with you over something so stupid,” she says, “it was an argument – just a stupid argument. I-“ she wipes at the tears that had gathered in her eyes when she hit the ground after Ritchie’s blow. “ I obviously said things that I didn’t mean.”

“Clarke you never say anything you don’t mean,” he snaps, “argument or not, if you said it you were thinking it-“

“No that’s not-“ she tries to gather her thoughts, because she did think it- in a way. She was angry at him for treating her differently, but she was never trying to accuse him of only caring about the sex. She was just frustrated- and afraid, because things with him were never supposed to go as far as they did. “this whole thing makes me nervous,” she says, “you have to understand that.”

“I do understand that,” he says, walking towards her until her back is up against a tree, “what I don’t understand is how you can’t see how much I-“

She freezes, because whatever he’s about to say in the heat of the moment will probably only make everything worse, “Bellamy don’t,” she warns.

He sighs and leans forward until his forehead is resting on the trunk of the tree, right next hers. “Sometimes I think I would move mountains to protect whatever the fuck this is between us,” he mumbles.

“That doesn’t terrify you?”

He pulls back and meets her eyes. “Of course it does.”

As she looks at him, all of her frustration sort of fades from her mind. She’s missed his eyes, his big stupid brown eyes. “So what do we do?” she asks.

“What do you want to do?”

Without thinking about what it will mean – and whether she’s officially lost the biggest argument they’ve had in years, she kisses him. Once, twice, until his mouth actually starts to move against hers and there’s an incredibly swooping sort of feeling in her stomach.

“Clarke-“ he pulls away, “I don’t know if-“

She kisses him again, and whatever doubts he was having must fly straight from his head because before she knows it he’s got his hands framing her face and every part of him is pressing her back into the tree. His hands slid down and end up behind her thighs- lifting her.

“Ouch,” she says, when that spot on her back starts to ache.

“What?” he asks, pulling away to look at her.

“Ow, ow, ow.” She tries to adjust in his arms, but it doesn’t work. He sets her down and glares at her again.

“What is it?” 

“My back.”

He makes a frustrated sound. “I thought you said you weren’t hurt?”

“It’s not bad- it’s just sore.”

He pulls her closer to him, his hand finding it’s way under her shirt to the warmth of her back. He moves it back and forth- the way she used to do on his own sore back during lumber season. It’s not exactly where the pain is, but he’s trying. She kisses him again- slower.

“I am still incredibly pissed at you.” He says against her lips.

She just rolls her eyes, “What the hell else is new?”


	16. 11

11\. Why does your face look like that? (aka the one with the wet, shitty jacket)

“So Clarke is in a weird mood today,” Octavia says to him as she helps him scrub the mud from his jacket. 

His fingers are numb from the river water and he’s basically had a morning from hell so he hasn’t paid much attention to Clarke since they got back.

“What do you mean by weird- why does this smell more like shit than mud?”

Octavia almost laughs. “Usually when she comes back from Amity meetings she’s tense and snapping at everyone,” she glances up at him, “what happened?”

“Nothing happened,” he says. Mud isn’t this thick, it has to be shit. “Hand me that soap-“

“The lavender or the-“

“Whatever is going to make this smell better.” It’s the first time he’s actually felt a bit of appreciation for all the time Monty had put into his post-cataclysm cosmetic line. Although he doubts anything the kid had cooked up would be able to mask the stench of wet grass and horse shit. 

Octavia must have the same doubts because she raises her eyebrows and hands him Clarke’s basket, muttering a “Good luck with that,” under her breath. With a wrinkled nose she goes back to scrubbing. “You’d tell me if something did happen right- because I would find out.”

“If what happened?” His jacket is ruined. It has to be ruined. “No one’s going to war, no one’s predicting any natural disasters, crops are doing well, it was a simple meeting- and we were back in a day. If I hadn’t slid down a fucking hill it would have been the best we’ve ever had.”

He shouldn’t really be complaining. Slipping in some mud is nothing compared to what’s happened to others on trips out of camp, but the thing about Bellamy is that he can usually keep his cool when there are big troubles on the horizon. It’s the little stuff the sets him off. 

“So that’s it?” Octavia continues her line of questioning, pointedly ignoring the fact that he’s been trying to brush her off, “Clarke’s pulled the stick out of her ass because the crops are doing well?”

“Don’t know,” he mumbles over aggressive scrubbing, “ask her.”

“She looks like she got laid,” Octavia says in an underhanded whisper.

Bellamy glances up at her, he’s really not in the mood to play games. “If you want to know something- just ask.”

“You two have been getting close,” she says. What she means is _“I’ve seen her come out of your tent early in the morning.”_

“So that means we must be fucking?” They aren’t, because he’s matured since they hit the ground and he knows enough now to realize crossing that line with Clarke would make all those things people joke about behind their back feel very real.

“Well are you?”

“No,” he says harshly.

Octavia nods, “Do you want to be?”

Absolutely. Who the fuck wouldn’t?

“I’m not having this conversation with you. You’re my sister, I’m not discussing my sex life with my sister.” He starts pounding on his jacket with a rock- to loosen the mud packed into the seam.

“We’ve discussed my sex life.”

He can't help but cringe, “Forbidding you from having one is not the same thing as discussing it.”

“We’re going to be old and wrinkly and you’ll still be treating me like a six-year-old.” She sits back and crosses her arms, looking ironically pouty.

“You’ll still be trying to convince me to sleep with Clarke Griffin.”

“I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I actually think that would be a fucking disaster.”

Something sort of twinges in his gut. She’s right, and he’s been wrestling with that for a while. “I’m not disagreeing with you.”

“You want to know why?”

He wrings the water out and clenches his fingers to get the feeling back in them. “I know why, because she’s who she is and I’m who I am.”

Octavia looks hauntingly serious, almost like she’s wearing her war paint again. “She’s living on borrowed time and you love too fiercely.”

“We’re all living on borrowed time.” She doesn’t seem all that surprised that he snaps at her- but he sort of is.

“She’s gonna go one day. She’s gonna take off or die. She won’t be able to settle here, not like you’d need her to-“

Clarke’s been working really hard to hold onto the person she wants to be. Bellamy knows about fighting the darkness, about feeling trapped. He’d be lying if he said all this had never crossed his mind before but the truth was that he genuinely believed that she’d be unable to leave because it would mean breaking her promise to him, which was basically the most sacred thing they had here. _We’re in this together._

" I’m not sleeping with her,” he says gruffly- it isn’t the first time he’s had to explain this to someone. She won’t be the last to insinuate it, “but if I do it’s my business, mine and hers.”

“That’s fair,” she says, “you should remember that the next time you decide to spend an evening glaring at Lincoln for putting his hand on my knee.”

He scoffs because if she can’t see the difference between those two situations than she’s being stubborn beyond reason….as per usual.

She pulls her hands from the river and looks down at them. She’s been wearing a new ring, made of wire and some kind of black gemstone or rock. He’s been meaning to ask her about it, where she got it from, who gave it to her, but he’s a little afraid of those answers. He’s still not ready for his sister to belong somewhere else. “Seriously Bellamy,” she says, “people are noticing. They’re whispering-“

“Let them.” Truthfully there are worse things for them to whisper about.

“They assume you’re a thing,” she continues.

“Fuck it.” They are sort of a thing- they’re a thing of some nature. 

“Not in a joking _ha ha , Bellamy and Clarke are married_ kind of way.”

He’s starting to get frustrated. There’s an inch of filth under his nails and his hands are shaking from the cold and the weight of the wet fabric in his hand. “I get it.”

She stares at him, he’s gone back to scrubbing. “You’re okay with that?”

“The only thing I’m concerned with right now is being out a jacket with winter less than a fucking month away. So help, or don’t, but don’t expect me to waste my energy on worrying about what these idiots whisper about when I’m not around. I promise you I couldn’t care less.”

She helps him in the end, because she’s always loved him- even when he’s being a dick.

An hour later, his jacket isn’t much better. Part of him is planning on setting it on fire as soon as he gets back to his tent, but then he remembers that he doesn’t really have any other thick clothing and layers is a great policy but it doesn’t mean shit if your top layer isn’t thick enough. 

“Clarke,” he calls when he walks in, somehow he just sort of assumes that she’s there. “Here’s your soap.” She’s digging through his old crate, flinging fabric behind her into a big pile. When she looks up at him she smiles. “Just set it by the door.”

For a minute he actually forgets that they’re standing in his tent.

It’s something he should have done by now, sorting through the scraps of clothes he’d collected over the years. He didn’t even realize how much he had until he saw it laid out in small mountains all around her. “Want to explain to me what you’re doing?” he asks, because she doesn’t seem to see this as an invasion of privacy at all. Which it sort of isn’t – there’s not a lot of privacy between them to begin with. The strangest part is that she’s still smiling. When he really thinks about it she _has_ been doing that more than usual this morning.

“I’m looking for something to replace your jacket,” she says.

“I told you I didn’t have anything.”

“You’re not as resourceful as I am.”

Being that he’s standing there holding a jacket he’s just scrubbed with herbal soap and a rock he takes a little bit of offense to that. But it’s not worth the argument so he just tosses the mass of wet fabric at her. “Does that smell like shit to you?”

She actually laughs a little and holds it up to look at it. “Well it didn’t tear, if the worst thing about it is that it smells bad it’ll still serve its purpose.”

“I’m not walking around here smelling like manure.”

“Monty smells like manure.”

“Because Monty spends his days wrist deep in it, and he’s happy with that.”

“So am I,” she laughs, “those potatoes he harvested last week were delicious.”

She jumps to her feet to give him back his sopping mess of a jacket. Somehow it’s the fact that she just said the word _delicious_ , which is crazy because nothing down here is delicious, that makes him realize that Octavia was probably right.

“Alright stop,” he holds his arm out when she tries to step around him, “why does your face look like that?”

“Look like what?”

“Smug- happy.” He narrows his eyes at her. “You’ve been like this all day.”

“I’m not smug- I’m just in a good mood. Since when is that a bad thing?”

“Since these kids are seeing you walk around with your head in the clouds. Do you have any idea the rumors that they’re-“

She laughs again, this time sort of sarcastic and more like herself. “What that I’m secretly banging someone and it’s probably you? They’ve been saying that for years- sometimes it’s Raven actually.”

That’s an interesting thought. “Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Banging Reyes?”

“Ask me that again with a straight face.”

He raises his eyebrows and takes a step towards her, lowering his voice. “Are you having a secret affair with Raven Reyes?”

And just like always, from the very moment they hit the ground, she doesn’t back down. “Not currently, but I’ll let you know if anything changes.”

He can't complain about seeing her this way. She deserves these few moments of relief, but if anything he's curious.

“Hey,” he can’t help but smile a little as she goes back to the pile of old clothes on the ground, “what’s going on with you?”

Her shoulder shrug, weightless. “I had a good morning.”

“Watching me slide down a muddy fucking hill?”

“That made it a great morning.” They have a very brief staring contest that he's determined to win, and then she gives him this look, like she’s got some kind of secret.

“I talked to Bud before we left, he came to apologize to me for last night-“ she lets her sentence trail off, because she knows that he understands exactly what she's talking about.

Last night “Bud”– an outspoken old man from a clan beyond the river- tried to talk over Clarke while she explained flu prevention procedures. When she called him out on it, Bud basically called her a child. Bellamy found that pretty fucking annoying, so he’d had a little chat with him while Clarke was making her rounds. Bud was more informed now- he’s also pretty uneasy around guns.

“Said he was “chewed out” by my king-friend,” Clarke continued, “who was apparently unhappy with the way I was treated at the meeting last night.”

“Okay?” If she thinks he’s going to be embarrassed about it, she’s going to be pretty disappointed.

“He went on to say that he was unaware of my many accomplishments and my training as a healer. He hoped he could learn from me and my people.”

Now he's just standing there like an idiot while she grins at him. “Stop smiling at me, I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”

She stands up and tilts her head to the side. “Seems like you said a lot.”

“Wasn’t anything I wouldn’t say to your face.” And that's basically true, but he believes those kinds of things are usually best saved for deathbeds.

“Okay then say it.” She opens her arms as she takes a big step forward. “Say it all to my face right now.”

He’s not exactly sure why the idea of doing that makes him so uncomfortable but it definitely does. 

“You know-“

“No I don’t.” Her smile is gone now. “I know that our partnership is important to both of us for a lot of reasons but half of the time when you talk about me it’s like I’m just another problem you need to solve, something else to protect. Sometimes I just walk in a room and you do that exasperated sigh of yours- like I’m some great burden on you-“

She’s not a burden, she’s never been a burden. What she is is a weak spot. She’s that counterproductive reflex he has that leaves him vulnerable in a fight. It’s more his fault than hers, the people he cares about always turn into weak spots, maybe that’s the kind of thing Clarke was always trying to run from. Up until now though she’s never really seemed to understand that aspect of their relationship, she’d never commented on it at least. 

“Where is this coming from? Since when have you given a shit if you’re a burden on me?”

“Since I’m getting a little sick of feeling like we have a white knight- princess kind of relationship,” she says- and he feels like she’s probably using someone else’s words. “We’re getting too old for that. We’ve been through too much. It’s nice to know that you actually see us as equals, even if you won’t say it to my face.”

He’s a little surprised that she feels that way- to him actions are much stronger than words and he’s proved his faith in Clarke Griffin one hundred times over. 

“Of course I see us as equals,” he says, “I trust you with my life on a daily basis, this goes both ways.” He gestures back and forth between them. “I’m no expert but I don’t think there were many stories about the Princess saving the White Knight’s ass.”

“You’re a difficult person to be partners with sometimes Bellamy. I don’t think you can help it, and I’m not complaining but- sometimes it’s a little smothering.”

She must be expecting him to take offense to that because her shoulders are squared and her eyes are fixed on his, but he knows what she’s talking about. He knows that she’s right- even if she does sound pretty ungrateful. _You love too fiercely._

“Knowing that you bragged about me-“

“No,” he says, “I didn’t brag. Who the fuck said brag?”

“I said brag.” She points at herself and starts to walk towards him again- until there’s nothing but his wet shitty jacket between them. “It’s nice to know that you see me like that, like an asset not a responsibility.”

He looks down at her and wonders if his eyes shine like that when he’s drunk on confidence. “I didn’t realize that was a secret.”

“You’re not a man of many words.”

He thinks about sleepless nights and all of his scars that match hers. “Yeah I can see how it would be confusing, not like I’ve ever followed you into battle or anything…”

“You still call me princess.”

“Some girls want to be called princess.”

“Yeah maybe in bed, not in a council meeting.”

She’s very, very close now. He can smell the berries on her breath, see a small spot of purplish-red in the corner of her mouth. She looks back at him like no one else does, no fear, no condescension, no raking up and down his form like he’s nothing but a set of abs with a conveniently attractive face. Everywhere else on this planet they have to wear some kind of crown, some kind of armor- here, when it’s just the two of them, they’re both just people. She’s just a beautiful woman and he’s just a man who’s starting to spend a little too much time thinking of her as a beautiful woman. He’s seen her do some pretty bad ass shit, heard her whisper things to him that have made his heart ache, but looking at her now, he’s pretty sure he’s never been so attracted to her.   
“If you _ever_ have a question about how I feel about you,” he lowers his head even further- so that there’s no doubt that he wants to meet her eyes. “all you have to do is ask me.”

She blinks once, twice, “Do-“

“Bellamy, hunting party is back!” Murphy calls from somewhere outside of the tent.

Clarke looks up towards the sky and laughs. Bellamy is relieved.

“I’ve gotta go deal with that,” he says.

“Yeah,” she agrees, “but um- thank you. Thank you for having my back.”

“Anytime,” he says. It’s not a big deal- he and Clarke. They’re on the same page. This is working for them- for now.

“Ditto,” she starts to smile again, “so- to answer your first question. Yes, your jacket absolutely smells like shit.”

Yeah, this will definitely work for now.


	17. 14

_14\. “What if we didn’t need you?” aka the one where a sleep deprived Bellamy realizes that he's fucked._  
   
   
He’s been sleeping on the ground for three weeks.

Three weeks with the metal of his gun leaving imprints on his skin, the ground cold and hard against his back. He’s done this before – and in much more dangerous conditions- but back then all that was waiting for him at home was a ratty tent, a lot of stress, and a sister who was probably closer behind him than she was to safety.

Octavia wouldn’t be there when he returned – she had her own orders. The duties of a warrior outweighs the concerns of a big brother. What a fucked up world he’s drug them into.

No, this time it’s worse because there’s something new waiting for him at home- a warm bed and a woman that wants to do more than sleep next to him. Not just a woman- Clarke Griffin. 

He’d been sucked into her orbit years ago- probably from the very beginning- orbiting around her like maybe she was the center of the Universe. She wasn’t- _they_ weren’t- but sometimes when it was just them they had a world that felt all their own.

That could be a nightmare- because they were both difficult, difficult people who probably would have been better off not getting attached to each other. At first the attachment was practical – an iron chain that kept things together every time it felt like they’d fall apart.  And then things changed- gradually but also all at once.

He’d gotten used to having her next to him- knowing that it could never be like that, but then it was time for him to leave again and she knew that she couldn’t follow and all of the sudden she was in his face, screaming at him like he’d just betrayed her.

That night it had made sense. He could see those feelings he’d been fighting – could hear them in her words- so he kissed her.

That was a fucking game changer if he’d ever seen one.

The few moments of rest that his brain gets, when they’re resting or waiting or sleeping, are filled with her. Not like it used to be – the _Is she alright?_ / _What the fuck am I walking into when I get back to camp?_ kind of thoughts. These were stronger, dark around the edges: her heels digging into his back, her knees shaking, his hands splayed across her ribcage, her breath against his neck, the things she fucking whispers when she doesn’t realize what she’s saying, her eyes- bright and welcoming and a shade of blue that can’t be replicated by nature.

He’s unfocused, restless, he trips over his fucking feet when someone says her name.

She’d bounded them together in a way that was absolutely terrifying- one that she probably wasn’t even aware of.

He was fucked.

“You gonna get sick?”

He’s startled from his thoughts by the young man whose guard duty he’d decided to intrude on. Cade O’Leary- a goofy little blonde kid that Clarke jokingly called Jasper Jordan’s apprentice. He wore a rifle better than Jordan ever had- so Bellamy’s encroachment wasn’t due to lack of faith but a genuine disgust over his current situation and the desperation he’s been trying to hide.

“No,” Bellamy says shortly.

They weren’t meant to be talking. That wasn’t the point of this. Bellamy wanted to sit in the quiet, stare at the fire and talk himself back into being a good soldier.

“Haven’t been sleeping?” he asks.

Bellamy looks up and glares at him, “Excuse me?”

“You look like you’re dying. You weren’t shot were you?”

“No.” Bellamy says- though the aching certainly makes it feel that way.

He tries not to pay attention as the kid pulls out a tiny twine sack from his pocket. He pulls a crudely rolled cigarette from the pile inside- it’s not tobacco, Clarke and Bellamy know that, but Monty usually kept control of the supply so they hadn’t interfered.

After lighting it with a thin stick he’d pulled from the fire- he leans across the fire and hands it to him. “Here.”

His instinct is to yell at him- because he should be intimidated, if Bellamy had truly been on his game he’d be intimidated, but then he remembers the one time Monty had convinced him to indulge – he’d slept like a fucking baby afterwards.   
   
“Wouldn’t overthink it boss,” O’Leary says, “it comes with a _high_ recommendation from Dr. Green.”

 Bellamy squeezes it between his fingers and with a sigh of resignation closes his eyes and takes a drag of it. Strong, sweet smoke fills his mouth, seeping down into his chest. He covers his mouth to make his coughing fit sound less pathetic but it doesn’t stop O’Leary from laughing- and it certainly doesn’t stop him from smoking more.

Clarke slips away a little, like someone had pulled a curtain between them, and for a moment he feels a pleasant warmth push the ache away.

“See,” O’Leary says.

Bellamy hands it back to him, “You shouldn’t have that out here,” Bellamy says.

O’Leary just shrugs. “I have a prescription,” he says, “I have anxiety.”

Bellamy coughs again- trying to hold onto the relief- “We all have anxiety.”

“Get yourself a prescription,” O’Leary jokes- even though it’s not a joke and they both know it.

“A few more weeks of sitting out here waiting and I’ll probably have to,” he says bitterly.

He looks down at his boots, scuffed and dirty, coated in layers of mud from the rainstorms and the riverbanks and that one area of forest that was basically a fucking marshland. Nothing had happened- no encounters with these supposed warriors from the west. He was getting a little pissed off- more than a little bored-  but when the alternative was getting shot at – who the fuck was he to complain? “Monty isn’t a doctor. Keep that in mind.”

 “Can I ask you a question about Clarke without you punching me in the face?” O’Leary asks after a particularly long drag.

 Bellamy leans back and watches the smoke dissolve into the night sky. “Probably not.”

 He’s never been ashamed of overreacting when it comes to certain things (Octavia, wasted ammo, Clarke Griffin, unattended fires, etc) but the rush in his head makes him feel even less ashamed- proud even. “If you wouldn’t say it to her face, it’s probably in your best interest not to say it in front of me.”

 O’Leary nods, “I mean- I was just wondering how you convinced her to stay out of this one.” He looks around at the dark forest like they were actually sitting in the middle of a war. “When we came here last time – after the ambush – the whole camp heard her screaming at you while she was pulling that bullet out.”

 Bellamy winces at the memory: consciousness seeping through his fingers like cold water- his fingers growing numb, his blood staining Clarke’s hands. She’d been furious with him back then- for her own fear. It would be worse now. If he died he wouldn’t just be leaving her alone on their throne. He’d be leaving her _alone_  alone, because though they hadn’t really talked about it -it was obvious that together meant something entirely different now- and because of that, the part of their together that meant having to be apart, it feels a little bit like that bullet did.

 Bellamy clears his throat and notices O’Leary staring at him. “We have an agreement,” he says, “we can’t both be in the line of fire- not at the same time. We can’t do that to our people, not when things are finally starting to feel normal.”  
   
O’Leary nods and digs the toe of his boot into the ground. “So you got the short straw again huh?”  
   
Bellamy watches him toss what’s left of the cigarette into the fire, it burns away slower then he thought it would. “No- she did.”  
   
His eyebrows knit together in confusion. “What do you-“  
   
“This isn’t the hard part,” Bellamy says, “We’re out here risking our lives but everyone we left back there is just waiting. Helpless.”

He looks away from O’Leary and watches the fire animate the shadows of the leaves hanging off of the old trees around them. “It had to be this way,” he says, “I couldn’t do what she’s doing. I couldn’t just wait.”

He was going crazy just thinking about her sleeping without him- he can’t even imagine what it would be like to live with knowing she was going into war without him.   
   
“Clarke is strong.” O’Leary says- with the same confidence he’d used to endorse his prescription.   
   
Before he can stop himself, Bellamy lets out a laugh, “Clarke Griffin is a fucking force of nature. It’s not even fair how strong she is,” he says- feeling the cold creep back every time he says her name. “The rest of us are just stumbling around trying not to break things and she’s just- “  
   
“Regal?” O’Leary suggests when Bellamy can’t seem to find a word.  
   
Accurate- but not good enough. She’d always been more than a Princess- more than a Queen even.

“A hero.”  
   
O’Leary nods. “She’d probably say the same about you,” he said, “if someone drugged her before they asked.”  
   
Bellamy surprises himself by laughing again, “None of this is a secret kid,” he says, because being high doesn’t make his feelings for her any less obvious. They’ve been making fun of him for those feelings for years- sometimes to his face.  
   
“Yeah but you don’t seem as angry about it as you usually do.”   
   
His head is starting to spin, so he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about. He searches in the dirt for the waterskin he’d dropped. “About what?”  
   
“Being in love with Clarke Griffin.”  
   
Bellamy’s eyes jerk up- back into the light where O’Leary is looking at him with a small smile. He looks so smug that for a moment Bellamy is sure that he’s hallucinated all of this – O’Leary is just his conscience trying to trick him into saying things he can’t take back. The spinning in his head is getting worse- it makes it impossible to say yes or no, to deny or embrace. So he settles on his old pal anger and clenches his fists so tight that the smile slips off of O’Leary’s face.  
   
“I am angry,” he says- words forming in some dark space he’s not even really aware of, “I’m always angry.”  
   
“Bellamy I-“  
   
“Because if you’re fucking stupid enough to get attached to someone like her- that’s it. You’re done when they’re done. You will never look at anyone the way you look at them- even when you know they’re fucked up. Even when you can see every flaw- including the ones they can’t. You’re stuck. It’s like catching a fucking terminal illness.” He finds the waterskin, but drops it back to the ground.  
   
“That’s romantic.”  
   
“This world is not romantic,” Bellamy says- gesturing around them, “people can pretend that it is, but it’s not. Love is different here. It’s about survival –“ he lets out a humorless laugh, “it’s a fucking weakness but it would be worse without it.”  
   
O’Leary looks sad now- like he’s just recalled a horrible memory of someone dead or out of reach. Bellamy doesn’t feel guilty, because this feels like the wisdom that Clarke’s always insisting that he has. “I am angry- but it’s only because I don’t trust this world.” he says, “if we were anywhere else- that girl would be-“ he lets his words taper off. They’re dangerous- what if’s are dangerous. “I’d never leave her,” he says, “I’ll say that much.”  
   
“Do you think it would be the same anywhere else?” O’Leary asks. Bellamy just raises his eyebrows at him, so he clears his throat and clarifies. “What if we didn’t need you?”  
   
It’s a good question. One he’s never allowed himself to dwell on. He has no idea who he’d be if they didn’t need him here.   
   
“I don’t know,” he says.  
   
“If we’d stayed on the ARK,” O’Leary presses, “if we’d never come down to Earth, you and Clarke may have never met.”  
   
“What’s your point?”  
   
“I don’t know,” he says, “silver lining I guess. I mean- I understand what you’re saying. If you have feelings for her it pretty much promises some kind of horrible pain at some point but – I don’t know Boss, seems like as much as the Universe has tried to fuck you since we got here, they gave you something at least.”

Bellamy shakes his head, he’s not about to get into all the ways the universe has fucked him.  
   
“You get to fall in love with an actual warrior princess,” O’Leary continues, “start a fucking kingdom, battle the bad guys. The stories my Mom read me as a kid- that’s your fucking life.”  
   
Bellamy is shocked for a moment- he can’t imagine anyone looking at their disaster of a life as some kind of epic romance. “It’s not all good.”  
   
“it’s not all bad either,” O’Leary argues, “look, if I went to Clarke with a bullet in my leg she’d fuss over me, maybe call me an idiot, but she’d never yell at me the way she yelled at you that day. And yeah it sucked while it was happening, but she was doing it because she cares so much about you that a fucking bullet hole sent her into a rage. 

Most of us will probably never have someone feel that way about us. So yeah you’ll get hit with the occasional bullet- but someone is there to rip it out, sew it up, and tell you how devastated they’d be if you were gone. 

For a lot of us- it feels like we disappear more and more each day. If you died she’d never let us fucking forget you- and if she died-“ he shutters, “we’d never- we’d look at you and see her. Whatever is going on with you two is something most of us didn’t even think was real, so stop being fucking angry about it.” He takes a deep breath- the look on Bellamy’s face must seem a lot angrier than it actually is, because he quickly backtracks. “I didn’t mean to yell.”  
   
But Bellamy isn’t angry. He’s just processing- wondering why he’s never really been able to see their relationship that way.

“Yes you did,” Bellamy says, “but you’re right.”  
   
“I am?”  
   
“About part of it,” he clarifies, “about the part you see.”

O’Leary starts to reach for that pouch in his pocket again. Bellamy feels like its his responsibility to distract him.  
   
“You aren’t disappearing,” Bellamy says, “if’ we’d stayed you would have disappeared. This is your chance – to find whatever you want.”  
   
“Even a warrior princess?”  
   
Bellamy lets out a laugh, “if she’s out there, she’ll find you. Or you’ll stumble across someone else, or a couple of someone’s. You’ve got friends kid, and a family. That’s what really matters. The rest just happens.”

“So if I die out here, “ O’Leary says, “you won’t let anyone forget me?”

“I won’t.”

“And if you die- I’ll tell Clarke how you feel.”

Bellamy narrows his eyes, “She knows-“

“Does she?”

Yes. She has too.

“Clarke and I don’t need to say things,” he tells him.

“Well you still should- just like you should probably admit out loud that being in love with her isn’t actually like having a terminal illness.”

Again, he doesn’t deny it. “I was being metaphorical.”

“So find another metaphor,” he says, “for the way you feel about her. “

He thinks for a moment, through the cloudiness in his head and the dryness of his mouth. Giving him an answer isn't as hard as he thought it would be. “Have you ever been lost?” he asks him, “out here- or even up on the Ark?”

O’Leary nods- “Spent three hours lost in Factory Station when I was seven.”

Bellamy nods, “Do you remember the feeling when you finally realized where you were? When you saw something or someone that you recognized? The panic just disappears – and you feel like your fucking shaking because you’re so relieved?”

“Sure,” O’Leary says- looking at him like he’d just recited poetry.

“That’s what it’s like. That’s what she feels like.” His eyes start to feel heavy, “and if you repeat any of this to anyone I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”

He laughs, “I don’t know what you’re so ashamed of Boss.”

“I’m not ashamed,” he says, “I’m tired and I’ve been drugged.”

“I’ve got another hour on watch,” O’Leary says, he sounds just as awake as he has the entire time. “Go to sleep.”

There’s a part of Bellamy that’s screaming that a kid that’s been smoking does not need to be on watch- but he’s tired like he hasn’t been in a long time, and if he doesn’t take advantage of this he’ll probably end up murdering someone or walking off of a mountain.

“I’m serious O’Leary,” he says as he starts to walk away, “you tell no one.”

O’Leary pretends to zipper his lips, “On pain of death.”

That night Bellamy sleeps till dawn. If he dreams of Clarke- he doesn’t remember.


	18. 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one was really interesting because I just finished Post Apocalyptic Guide to Raising a Hero- which is basically what would have happened had this gone the other way. Also just a warning, there are mentions of pregnancy loss in this one. 
> 
> The next chapter I post will be a little lighter.
> 
> As always, thanks for reading!

_19\. "Is this what you want?” aka the one that could have been._

 

Maybe the problem is that she’s become desensitized to tragedy.

Not that this is a tragedy – not really. It certainly could be, it has been for other people. If she’s being completely honest with herself, it doesn’t even feel like it’s happening to her. She feels like a doctor diagnosing someone else.

_Something feels off?_

_You’ve been getting headaches?_

_More fatigued than usual?_

_What day of the month is it?_

She hasn’t said anything to anyone, because there’s an irrational part of her that thinks that saying out loud will make it true. Hearing anyone else’s diagnosis would make it real.

And there’s still a small chance that it isn’t.

So she lives life normally, trying not to draw attention to herself, and that means dominating all of her conversations with Raven, biting her tongue every time Bellamy pisses her off, and never looking Octavia Blake directly in the eye.

It doesn’t even eat at her really- because she’s suffered through so many different plagues of worry that this- something that can’t even be confirmed right away- feels more like one of those reoccurring nightmares she can’t shake. When it hits, it hits hard, but most of the time she can just push it to the back of her mind.

Then time starts to make that hard to do.

She starts spending more time counting days- thinking about the things she’d learned about women’s health in courses back on the Ark. It starts to build- like a hurricane that stalls over land- with darker clouds and louder wind until she can’t ignore it any longer.

She has to tell someone.

And that someone should be Bellamy.

The question is how- because she’s pretty sure that this has the potential to push him over whatever edge he’d been teetering on for years. He won’t be able to handle the not knowing- it will drive him crazy regardless of how he’d actually feel about it if it’s true. And that’s the bigger question isn’t it? Is he going to see this as a tragedy? Is this something that he actually wants?

She starts to tell him almost every day- when they’re lying in bed in the quiet and it’s just them, in a place they can be affectionate and relaxed. She doesn’t want to ruin that safe space- but it’s not something she can bring up in front of others either.

One morning they’re standing by the smokehouse. A project they’ve been working on for a few years, a way to cook meat in bulk – to feed their growing numbers. Its just him and her- both of their arms crossed in front of them.

It smells good- that should be a good sign- but it also makes Clarke’s stomach turn, which brings her back to the hurricane of worry gaining strength in her mind.

It’s Bellamy who finally opens the door, the smell hits Clarke and she has to turn away.

“I’m not sure about this,” he says- glancing back at her before pulling out his knife and slicing a small piece of the hog they’d brought back just a few days ago.

“It’s probably fine,” she says, to reassure him- and herself. “We’re just not used to it.”

“Hope your right,” he says. A lot of labor and good wood had gone into this project, they were counting on it.

She watches him take a bite, trying to force himself to like the taste of smoked meat, and she just blurts it out.

“I’m late.”

He finishes chewing- makes an aggravated face and turns back to examine the wood. “I can finish here,” he says, “it’s edible- I think we just used the wrong wood…”

“No Bellamy,” she says, “I’m late. I’m _late_ ”

His shoulders lock up. She’s being vague, but he understands. With unexpected composure, he steps back and closes the door to the smokehouse, before turning and staring at a spot just over her head.

“How late?” he asks.

She tries to think of a way to deliver that answer in the least intimidating way, “Couple of months,” she says.

His eyes sink down to meet hers, “A couple of months?” he repeats, “and you’re just telling me this now?”

“Sometimes it happens,” she says, “when we first got here- it took three months. Sometimes stress and malnutrition can-“

“Is that what this is?” he asks.

She glances around, just to make sure that no one is around to listen, “I have no idea.”

He lets out a sigh, “Well how do we find out?”

“We wait.”

“Clarke,” he says- like she’s just refused to answer his question.

“That’s all we can do,” she says, “that’s what had to happen with the others. We don’t have the equipment.”

He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. His fingers clench and unclench, they rest at his sides, then up to his forehead. “How did this happen?!” he says.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she asks. It’s harsh- but she has been holding herself back for a long time and the look on his face is so frustratingly confused that she wants to make him angry just so it will go away.

“Your implant-“

“It happens.”

“How?!”

“DO YOU WANT ME TO DRAW YOU A FUCKING DIAGRAM?”

“Stop yelling,” he says, taking a step towards her. “Someone is going to hear you.”

“Stop looking at me like I did this on purpose!”

“I’m looking at you this way because you’ve been keeping it from me for over a month!” he says.

“I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure,” she says.

“So you’re sure?”

“No,” she emphasizes, “no I’m not.”

He takes a deep breath. “Well there are symptoms right? Have you had any?”

“I mean yes but-“

“But what?” he demands.

“But everything is symptom of pregnancy,” she says, “ _everything_ and the second you even start suspecting it – your mind starts playing tricks-“

“There has to be something we can do,” he insists, “we can’t just wait. We have to know. I have to know.”

She looks down at her feet and shakes her head, “I don’t know what to tell you Bellamy,” she says.

He’s silent for a moment. She doesn’t want to look up at him, because she’s starting to feel like she might cry and that is so fucking counter-productive.

“Hey,” he finally says- and she realizes that he’s gotten closer to her, “what are you doing?”

“Trying not to fight with you,” she says.

“Clarke, look at me,” he says. She glances up and he’s right there, “I am not mad at you.”

“Bellamy-“

“No, you need to understand that. I’m pissed off- because I’m fucking terrified and I have no patience – but I am not mad at you. I don’ even- I won’t even know how I feel about it until we know for sure.”

“We’ve never even talked about this,” she says, “we’ve never talked about having kids.”

“Because it feels like we’ve been taking care of 100 of them for almost ten years,” he says- his voice is still clipped, but he’s leaning into her now.

“Because its dangerous,” she says, “and the last thing we need is more responsibility.”

Now that’s she’s started to vocalize her doubts she can’t really stop them.

“Half of us are still living in tents, we may have to fucking relocate if the drought doesn’t end.”

He stops her with a hug, not as affectionate as it has been in the past- one of those hugs that’s meant to ground her, to keep her from spiraling. “One thing at a time,” he says.

She closes her mouth and nods against his chest. She doesn’t want to make this worse for him.

“I’m taking a walk,” he says after a few moments of silence. She squeezes her eyes shut, but she doesn’t fight him. He needs this. Needs to be alone with it, like she’d been alone with it.

“I’ll be back,” he promises as he pulls away.

She feels terrible for just blurting it out now, for not planning it. He looks lost in a way she’s never seen. The confidence that’s remained in his eyes through all of this seems duller now. And they’ll deal with whatever comes. He’d be an incredible father- someone she wouldn’t be surprised to learn dreamed of having a big family. That’s probably the worst part, because it may be something he wants- but like this? In this place? Where it would be a struggle, a horrible dangerous struggle for nine months and the rest of the child’s life. But he would be good at it – because as impulsive and temperamental as he could be – he loved better than anyone she’d ever known.

“Bellamy,” she says- reaching out to grab his arm when he starts to walk away. She pulls him back to her – kisses him to make up for all she’s been holding back the last few weeks, kisses him like she’s just remembered every wonderful thing he’s ever done for her.

Part of her imagined that he’d cut it off pretty quickly- but instead he steps closer, tilts his head and pulls it deeper. His hands move up to frame her face, hers tangle in his shirt, and as someone whose experiences have made affection uncomfortable - she can’t help but think this is the most romantic thing that’s ever happened to her.

If she ever doubted it when he told her he loved her- she’d know it now.

“It’ll be okay,” she whispers to him when they pull apart.

He gives her a look that she remembers- brown eyes peering at her through messy hair and the after-haze of acid-fog. Sometimes she feels like she’s a burden on him- like all she does is put more weight on his already heavy heart- but not when he looks at her like that.

“Go,” she says- nodding towards the woods where he likes to pace.

“I’ll be back,” he says again.

She turns when he starts walking away – it’s time she focuses on something else. Now that they’re caring this burden together, they both need a distraction. Something that’ll ease the pain of every day they’ll have to wait.

As it turns out- they get their answer just three weeks later. When that wonderful gift from Mother Nature that she’d been waiting on shows up just when it should. It must have been something else throwing off her cycle- that’s what she tells herself at least.

For some reason telling Bellamy that’s she’s not pregnant is just a stressful as telling him she suspected that she might be. He’s been good about it- only talking about it when she brings it up first, trying to hide his impatience and frustration with walks and projects, and constantly reminding her that he’s not going anywhere.

She imagined that they’d both feel relieved if it turned out that way- and she does, but it also sort of feels like she’s lost something. It’s not disappointment really- it’s more of a sting of realization, like maybe that’ll never happen for them, and maybe that’s okay.

Bellamy though- it may not feel the same for him. He may have wanted this deep down- and more than anything he’ll want to understand. He’ll want to know how she feels about it- and she knows he’ll wonder what they’ll never know for sure, _“Were you though?”_

Whether they were ready or not- its too painful to consider.

So she waits a few days- to make sure everything seems to be back to normal. This time she waits until they’re in their safe space- taking off their boots and getting ready to fall into bed.

He’s pulling angrily at a knot that he’d tied too aggressively that morning. Clarke walks over to his side of their bed and sits down- a hand on his shoulder.

“It came,” she said.

At first he’s confused- because she’s being vague again- but then his head tilts slightly and he sits back. “You sure?” he asks.

She nods.

“So it was,” he closes his mouth and avoids her eyes, “you weren’t?”

“I don’t know,” she says sadly, “but I’m not.”

She squeezes his shoulder and he nods. He looks disappointed though- still relieved, but definitely a little sad.

“These things happen,” she says, “we’ll just have to be more careful.”

“Is that what you want?” he asks.

And she knows he’s asking out of weakness, because otherwise he’d never put her on the spot like that, especially when he’s looking at her like he already knows the answer.

She’s never really considered motherhood. It seems impractical and dangerous, so she’s pushed it away to the back of her mind. So honestly? Yes. This is what she wants. What they have now is what she wants. It’s what she feels comfortable with. But it’s not just about her- the day she gave into her feelings for him, she made it about them. What’s important now is that they’re both happy- if one day he decides he wants a family- she can’t just dismiss him because she’s afraid.

They’d gone to war together. They could handle anything.

“I want whatever happens,” she finally says, “I want whatever happens with you- and if that’s….a family then I can-“

Saying it out loud is a little harder than thinking it, and obviously he can tell because he reaches up and grabs the hand she had resting on his shoulder.

“Clarke-“

“What?”

“You don’t want a kid,” he says, “not now.”

“But that doesn’t mean forever,” she reassures him.

He shrugs, “I never thought we’d make it this far,” he says. “Never thought we’d even have this conversation.”

It’s a good point, they should both be dead about ten times over. There’s probably a million different scenarios where they wouldn’t have even ended up together if things had gone another way.

“If it’s something that you want,” she says, “then it’s a conversation that we need to have.”

“Clarke,” he says, he looks at her – quickly sweeps his eyes around the tent and smiles, “I’m good.”

She smiles a little too, “You’re good?”

“I’m not missing anything,” he says, “this- you and me- this is enough for me.”

She just stares at him- the usually intense and stoic Bellamy, with his manic bursts of emotion and grudge against fate, sitting there like he’s the most carefree person in the world. And she knows that’s not exactly how he’s feeling- that somewhere in him the loneliness of a young man robbed of his family is stirring again, but this thing they’ve found with each other has done a lot to appease that loneliness – for both of them.

He’s right. She’s good too, the two of them, it’s enough for now.

This experience, if anything, has made it perfectly clear to her that she’s ended up exactly where she needed to be.

“I’m sorry you had to wait,” she says.

“Don’t be.”

He gives her another one of those intense looks- because he knows what she means. He knows she’s not just apologizing for the news he’d spent the last month waiting for. She’s talking about the time he’d spent alone on the ARK, the gaps on the ground when he didn’t think he had a future, the years he’d spend considering her a part of his future while she tried to pretend to be incapable of love.

Bellamy has been waiting a long time to be content.

They both have.


	19. 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more to go! 
> 
> I have gone back and done some editing on earlier chapters- I've been working on this for about two years so- a lot has changed with the show, the characters, and my writing in general.
> 
> Thanks for reading! I hope to have the final chapter out soon!

_8\. “Everything go okay?” aka the one where Clarke goes solo_

 

“Okay,” she says- as she stands with her hands on her hips, looking over what had once been an intricately stacked and organized mountain of firewood. “Okay- I’m going to ask one last time and I’m not even mad,” she lies, “really. I just want to know what happened.”

Jasper is standing next to her, his head bowed, pinching the bridge of his nose the way he does when he’s starting to get a headache. Somewhere on the other side of this catastrophe is Raven – checking to make sure no one is buried under the wreckage.

“What exactly do you mean?” Dylan asks, he’s one of the three man-children Clarke is currently interrogating.

“What do you mean, _what does she mean_?” Jasper asks – so loud that Clarke is reminded that despite his occasional goofiness, Jasper has very little patience for perceived unintelligence, “how the fuck did the firewood collapse?! What else could she possibly mean?”

“Well to be fair, it didn’t all happen at once!” Dylan defends. “One part fell- and then it hit another- which hit another.”

“That’s not what she’s asking about!” Jasper yells, “That’s basic science. She needs to know who the fuck knocked over the first part!

She holds a hand out to steady Jasper- who may actually be trying to _become_ Bellamy, “Calm down,” she tells him.

“No, you can’t be calm,” Jasper says, “these idiots don’t respond to calm.”

Bellamy’s injuries had truly taken a toll on everyone. His massive boots had to be filled and Clarke couldn’t do it on her own- not with her own boots to worry about. So she’d expected others to step up. Raven had been working with Miller to keep the guard rotation organized, Octavia was helping with hunting and scouting trips, Monty had learned to keep one eye on the main fire the entire day (the way that only Bellamy could), and Jasper- well Jasper had taken to being Clarke’s Bellamy Soundboard. He helped in his own way of course- because he was a subtle kind of intelligent that often went unappreciated, but lately he’d been following Clarke around with a surly look on his face. Trying to help her keep that balance that was failing in Bellamy’s absence. In a way it was extremely strange, but in another, bigger way, it was incredibly sweet and oddly comforting.

“The important thing,” Clarke says- trying as hard as she can to maintain her diplomatic tone despite wanting to kick the kid in the shins, “is that we know what happened so it won’t happen again.”

“Fine,” Dylan says. He shuffles around on his feet and looks over at his friends, “there was a bee.”

“A bee?” Clarke asks, “a bee toppled the firewood?”

“No,” he says, “a bee attacked us and-“ he lets out an embarrassed sigh, “we accidentally knocked it over.”

“So,” Jasper says, “in your hurry to run away from a bug, you ran into a five foot stack of firewood- and then just stood here and watched as the whole thing fell?”

All three of them start rambling about it being an accident, and the bee being huge, and maybe being, allergic. Clarke squeezes her eyes together and takes a few deep breaths. Beside her Jasper is laughing, “My God you are lucky Bellamy got shot,” he says, “because if he were here, you’d probably be dead.”

“Jasper!” Clarke chastises.

“What? I’m being honest. This is going to take days to fix- not to mention how easily someone could have gotten hurt- this would have been a classic tyrannical King-style Bellamy freak out.”

“The key words are _would have_ ,” Clarke says, “Bellamy is resting – and that means that currently, this is none of his business.”

“But we need him to-“

“No, no, no,” Clarke says quickly, “you don’t need him to do anything. He’s busy regaining use of the lower half of his body. You three- along with everyone else assigned to work lumber this week- are going to work with Raven to get this back up.”

“But-“

“Why would you argue with me?” she questions. “What about this could you possibly find confusing? I gave you and order- you follow it. This was your fault, so you fix it.”

Dylan and his friends open their mouths like they’re going to continue to argue so Clarke turns her back on them. “Jasper- can you stay here and help Raven get this started?”

He glances over where Raven is cursing under her breath in Spanish- she knows very little Spanish, only the curse words her mother had passed down to her. She’d broken them out very few times over the years. It seemed to make Jasper very weary.

“Just do what she asks and slip away when she gets distracted,” Clarke pleads, “mostly I just need to you to keep these idiots in line until more people show up to help. I have to go meet the hunting party and head off Octavia before she see’s Bellamy-“

“Are you still drugging him?” Jasper asks.

Clarke narrows her eyes, outraged that she still has to defend her completely ethical actions, “I am not drugging him,” she says, “I’m giving him a natural sleep aid, that’s helping him rest so he can heal. Even Octavia agrees-“

“You’re trying to keep him unconscious so that he doesn’t hear about shit like this and come hobbling out here. I get it Clarke. I’m just joking,” he says with hands raised in surrender, “trying to lighten the mood.”

She shakes her head and storms away from him, “I don’t have time for that Jasper- this place is fucking falling apart.”

 

It’s not really. Nothing is happening that doesn’t happen all the time- but this week has been an absolute week from hell and without Bellamy shouldering some of it, Clarke feels like she’s drowning.

There were six pretty severely injured people when they came back to camp- all from some ambush in the meadow near what used to be Mount Weather- where Lincoln said they believed a northern clan had been raiding weapons bunkers for years. The bullets she’d pulled out of them looked much different than the ones they’d used. That on its own was terrifying- even if Lincoln had assured her that their lands were secure for now.

While all that was going on, there was an unsanctioned fire in camp that did some damage to three tents, which meant three people needed to be relocated.

An animal had gotten into one of the gardens and destroyed their turnip plants.

One of the older girls is pretty sure she’s pregnant.

John Murphy is feuding with the kid who keeps trying to build a rockwall around his tent.

No one is drinking enough water.

It seems like there is an infestation of bees somewhere in camp.

And Clarke can’t get Bellamy’s blood stain off of her favorite shirt.

The worst part of it will be organizing funeral services for the two kids they’d lost, but she knows Bellamy would never forgive her if she did that without him.

She’s never walked so defensively through this camp. With every step she waits for someone to tell her that something horrible has happened, it feels like their giant walls are actually closing in on her. She wants to sit out in the quiet of the forest for a while, but there’s no Bellamy to leave things to. There’s no one watching- and everyone who had her back before is picking up slack in other ways.

Every once in a while it hits her- that this would be her life if he had died. The thought makes her legs feels numb.

“Clarke!”

As she approaches the main gate she sees Octavia waving to her- looking like a fucking warlord dressed in her hunting gear. She’s the only one standing in the group- the rest are crouched down on the ground surrounding something. Clarke increases her speed and prays that someone isn’t dead.

When she breaks through their circle, there’s a dead boar on the ground- a massive dead boar.

“I thought Bellamy told you to stay away from the boar?” she asks Octavia- because in their slow struggle to return to normalcy the hunting parties were still a few people smaller than they should be.

Octavia rolls her eyes- the way she always does when she’s underestimated. “It wasn’t exactly at full strength,” she says- pointing to the underbelly of the boar where’s there’s a large black spot covering the skin. As Clarke walks around the group to get a better look at it, she’s hit with a smell, much worse than your general dying animal kind of smell.

The people on the ground are starting to take steps back now- it actually looking like the spot is growing as they watch it.

“What the hell is that?” Octavia asks.

“I don’t know,” Clarke says, “could be some kind of bacterial infection or something. It’s certainly not edible.”

Octavia lets out loud groan, “Well then we’re fucked.”

“Octavia,” Clarke scorns- looking around at the others who can hear them.

“This entire area has been a warzone for weeks. Animals don’t stick around when there’s gunfire Clarke. It’ll take months for things to go back to normal.”

“We’ll make do,” Clarke says- it sounds more like a warning than a reassurance. “Just- someone get this thing out of here- carefully. Bury it somewhere, don’t leave it for something else to eat. The last thing we need is some kind of bacterial disease spreading through here Black Plague style.”

“What am I supposed to do in the meantime?” Octavia asks, “shoot rabbits from the wall?”

“Just- do what you can do,” Clarke says, “has Lincoln mentioned anything else about those chickens?”

Octavia shrugs, “They’re still a mess,” she says, “I’m sure the deal is still on, but it’ll probably be a while.”

Clarke nods, “Alright- can you just- make sure that gets out of here? I have to drag Monty to the gardens and see what’s edible.”

“How’s Bellamy?” Octavia asks.

“Good,” Clarke says- happy to discuss some good news, “no infection yet. He had some broth last night. He’s resting again today, so he’s probably not very lucid.”

She nods.

“And the firewood stacks fell over this morning so I need him to stay exactly where he is until they’re back up.”

“Wait the stacks- as in all of them?”

“Domino effect,” Clarke says bitterly.

“Okay,” Octavia nods- slipping back into business-mode, “we’ll deal with the boar, and then I’ll head back to the main fire- make sure that didn’t topple over too.”

“Thank you,” Clarke says in relief.

“Sure thing,” Octavia says- calling out to remind her to eat as she rushes away. It sounds so much like he brother that Clarke catches herself smiling.

She doesn’t make it to the gardens without incident. Fox stops her- timidly apologizing for the interruption. They’re running low on material for clothing, blanket, and tent repairs. Clarke wasn’t surprised by this at all- but it was still another harsh reminder of how important trade agreements are going to be in the oncoming months.

“Just be as sparse as you can,” Clarke tells her, “we’re working on it- I promise.”

“I know,” she says, “it’s just- with the tent damage.”

“I know, I know – I have a shirt I can donate,” she says, “it’s just- I mean, it’s covered in blood.”

Fox smiles, “That doesn’t really matter- half of Harper’s tent is made of the blanket we got from that old car. That has stains of every shape and color on it.”

It’s good that she can find humor in it. That’s honestly the best way to survive down here- you have to laugh at some point, at something. Which is why when Clarke finally makes it to the Gardens and see’s Monty with mud splattered all over his face she can’t help but let out a laugh.

“This is not funny,” he says, “I’ve chased off three of them today. We need to figure something out.”

Clarke sighs and looks around. “We can’t even find the spot they’re getting through on the wall. Murphy told Bellamy he’d patched one, but obviously that was bullshit.”

“Well- then while we’re relying so much on this we need to station someone here.”

“To guard against Rabbits?”

“If you want cabbages- yeah.”

“Speaking of cabbages,” she says, “we need something for tonight and tomorrow morning.”

Monty looks at her with wide eyes, “I thought the hunting party was back-“

“It didn’t go well.”

He groans. “I mean- yeah we can figure something out but people are going to hate it.”

“It’s temporary. We need to eat to survive, it doesn’t matter if it tastes like hot water and dirt.”

“Which it will.”

“Monty.”

“Fine, alright- I’ll take care of it.”

“Thank you.”

“You talked to Bellamy today?”

“Not since early this morning, why?”

“Just wondering if he heard about the wood-“

“No, and I want to keep it that way.”

She leaves Monty in his garden and drags her feet across the ground to clear her shoes of mud. Her next stop should be Bellamy. He’s probably awake by now- growing restless and angry, especially with no one around to bitch at.

She’s right of course, and when she pulls back the plastic she’d used as a divider to give him some privacy – he’s leaning up- trying to get a look at his bandages like he was planning on ripping them off himself.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

He jumps a bit, and the rolls his eyes and settles back onto the cot. “Looking for blood,” he says.

She checks his bandages- they’ll need to be changed soon, but the wound appears to be healing. His coloring looks better also, and when she holds hand to his forehead he doesn’t feel any hotter than usual.

“I need to bath,” he says.

“I brought you water yesterday- you’re fine.”

“My hair feels fucking disgusting,” he groans.

“Yeah- well it sort of is.” She sits down on the rickety stool next to him and takes a deep breath.

She’s trying not to let her exhaustion show- but even in the dim light he sees it. His eyes narrow at her.

“Everything going okay?” he asks.

She should tell him that it is. She should tell him that everything is going great and he has nothing to worry about- but they made that agreement to never lie to each other and she feels so fucking overwhelmed that all she can do is fall forward and rest her head on the arm he has laying at his side.

His skin feels warm, his arm smells like that herby soap Monty had given him to use. She breathes in and out a few times. His hand rests against the back of her head- tangling in her already tangled hair.

He calls her name, but she ignores him. Being near him, hearing his voice, it’s regenerating her somehow – like a divine reassurance that the way life is right now is only temporary.

Then he starts to move- like he’s trying to rotate his hips to swing his feet out of bed, and Clarke puts a hand on his knee to hold him down.

“I’m fine,” she says- slowly sittiing back up, “seriously it’s all fine.”

He scoffs, “It doesn’t seem fine.”

“You just-“ she brushes her hair back into place with her fingers, “you have no idea how happy I am that you’re alive.”

“Clarke,” he warns, because he knows she’s keeping something in.

 

The problem is, she doesn’t know exactly how to say it without making it into more than it is. _When you’re not out there everything feels different._ , _I’m not myself when I can’t turn to you._ , _This is bullshit and if you ever pull this again, I’ll end you myself._

Eventually she settles for simplicity. “We’ve got a good system around here,” she says, “when it gets thrown off things just get… difficult.”

“If it weren’t for you drugging me things would be back to normal-“

“I’m not drugging you,” she says, slamming her hands down on the side of the cot.

“Okay, fine,” he mocks, “This is necessary. How much longer?”

“At least three days here- and then another two weeks without doing any physical activity.”

He sits up a bit, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Did you not hear what I just said? We need you here- I’m not going to let you fuck that up because you’re impatient.”

“Clarke,” he says- intensely, “you look like you haven’t slept since we got back- you can’t do this by yourself.”

And of course he would make this out like she’s the one that needs saving.

“I’m not,” she says, “I have help.”

“It’s not the same and you know it,” he says with that arrogance that bleeds into his words when he’s not paying attention. “At least talk to me. Stop pretending like everything is alright and tell me what’s going on.”

She shakes her head, “I can’t tell you anything. You can’t go on a rage walk right now. What’ll happen to this room?”

“Stop acting like I’m a fucking werewolf,” he says, “ I’m a grown man, we’ve been doing this for a long time. Tell me what’s going on.”

She should. She owes it to him. If this was reversed and he was keeping things from her she’d be irate.

“Fine- “she says, “but if I hear one expletive, you’re done.”

He rolls his eyes, “Fine.”

“There’s a shortage of fabric,” Clarke says- starting off with an easy one, “but we knew that was coming. Murphy has been having issues with Kye Schaffer –“

“The kid with the rocks?”

“Yeah.”

Bellamy shakes his head, but he still seems relatively calm.

“They brought back a boar this morning-“

“What!”

“Calm down, it was already dying. It has some disgusting black spot that was spreading like crazy so I told them to get rid of it. Octavia said there wasn’t much out there so I guess we just have to hope whatever it was, was an isolated incident.”

“That’s just f-“ he breaths in, “that’s just great.”

“And other than that – it’s just small stuff. No one is drinking water like they should be, Monty’s battling those rabbits again, the firewood stacks collapsed, the rope ladder is getting extremely frayed-“

He holds up a hand to stop her, “What the fuck did you just say?”

“Bellamy-“

“The firewood stacks COLLAPSED what the fuck does that mean?”

She stands up. “You’re done.”

“Clarke-“

“No, you obviously can’t handle it.”

“Clarke do not walk out of this room.”

She stops the few backwards steps she’d been taking. “No one was hurt and we’re getting it back up as we speak.”

“Who did it?” he demands.

“That is not relevant to you at this time.”

She sees the red come into his cheeks. A good sign for his recovery – but he certainly shouldn’t be raising his blood pressure like that. “I swear to God if you walk out of this room-”

“Everything is going to be fine,” she says, “as soon as you get better. Please trust me.”

“I do trust you,” he says, “it’s them I don’t trust.” He points out at the camp and she steps back to his bedside.

“It’ll be fine,” she grabs his hand and squeezes.

“I’m still pissed,” he says.

She lets out a bitter laugh, “Oh, I’m pissed too- at you and everyone else, but we don’t have time for that right now.”

“You’re pissed at me?” he repeats incredulously.

She lets her face slip into a glare, “I can’t get your blood stains out of my favorite shirt,” she says.

He looks away from her quickly- quick enough that she knows exactly what that experience was like for her. “Sorry about your shirt,” he says

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

He just nods and stares up at the ceiling. “Alright, “he finally says- and it still sounds like he’s mocking her a little bit. “I’ll sit here and I’ll get better.”

“Thank you.”

As she walks out of the room she hears him mumble a few more curses and a “Stop keeping shit from me!”

**Author's Note:**

> This story will be made up of 20 one-shots, each one a question. They won't be in chronological order but the number in parenthesis (1-20) will give you an idea of where that chapter falls on the timeline. This world of mine is sort of canon...sort of not...I'll just call it wishful thinking. Thanks for reading and of course let it be said that I do not own the 100 and this is all just for fun. =)


End file.
